


Broken Throne

by ClockworkCrow (icemink)



Series: The Victory March [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angry Kylo Ren, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dark Leia Organa, Dark Rey (Star Wars), F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Visions, Force-Sensitive Leia Organa, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Kylo Ren Redemption, Kylo has to deal with his Mom, Rey is afraid of being her parents, Swearing, Unplanned Pregnancy, not TROS compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:27:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 56,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21618343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icemink/pseuds/ClockworkCrow
Summary: Sequel to ifI Had My Way. Kylo Ren's trial is over, but the Hux wants to be sure the First Order is the one to execute him. Meanwhile, the Knights of Ren have found a new Master and are following his unknown agenda. As for Kylo he must decide if having a common enemy is enough reason for him to work with the Resistance, and his mother.She tied you to a kitchen chairShe broke your throne and she cut your hairAnd from your lips she drew the Hallelujah-Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: The Victory March [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1558030
Comments: 278
Kudos: 477





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler Warning: If anyone out there is trying to stay totally unspoiled for TROS and hasn't seen any of the previews, you should probably hold off on reading this until after it comes out. A lot of the plot of this part of the story was inspired by two scenes from the first promo for the movie, and starting with chapter two, it might give some things away. Otherwise, I have no special knowledge of what will happen in TROS, and I'm sure it will be nothing like this.

As far as Hux was concerned the trial of Kylo Ren couldn’t have gone any better. The Resistance had done an excellent job of making a fool of themselves as they agonized over the fate of the former Supreme Leader.

At least as far as Hux was concerned, Ren was the _former_ Supreme Leader. When Ren had disappeared months ago, Hux had quickly moved to consolidate power behind himself. He had been on the verge of officially declaring Ren dead when news had come that the Resistance had him and were going to put him on trial.

It put Hux in an interesting position. In the beginning, he assumed the Resistance would quickly try and kill Kylo Ren. As much as Hux wanted Ren dead, he wasn’t sure letting the Resistance execute him was the best path forward. Ren dying in a blaze of glory would have been a great propaganda piece, Hux wouldn’t have minded making a Ren a martyr if it solidified Hux’s power.

But letting the Resistance execute Kylo, might legitimize them. So Hux began to make a plan. There would, of course, be a rescue attempt, and tragically the Supreme Leader would be killed during it. He just had to figure out where the Resistance was holding him.

Hux realized that Ren’s lawyer might provide the perfect opportunity. It wasn’t easy, but he managed to make contact with the lawyer through several proxies and hint that he had information that could exonerate Kylo Ren. 

The lawyer bit and Hux had the perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. The First Order had several new and secret tracking technologies, and he was sure they would be able to track the holovids once they were broadcast to wherever the Resistance was hiding. 

Also, Hux would have the chance to show the Galaxy what he had done at Starkiller. The destruction of the base was still a sore point, and it had been a magnificent speech he’d given. Once the First Order had won, he’d always intended to make sure the speech was rebroadcast, so that the Galaxy could see the moment when the tables turned, so that they would know was Hux who had liberated them from the Senate.

And it had worked.

Hux had managed to track down the base where the trial was being held. But a kind of morbid curiosity kept him from striking at once. He wanted to see how the trial played out, so he’d kept his fleet hidden a short hyperspace jump away from the base.

It had also given him a chance to move some other pieces into play.

Not long after Kylo Ren had first disappeared, so had his knights. Not that the Knights of Ren had ever been easy to track. Snoke had always intended them to be a counterbalance to the military and had never made it easy for Hux to keep tabs on them. But Hux had his ways.

Initially, he had assumed they had gone in search of their missing Master. He was no longer sure. Something was going on with them. Something Hux didn’t like because he didn’t know what it was.

Even so, not long after the trial had begun, Volo Ren had appeared. It was hard to know what was going on in the Silian’s mind, but it was clear the insectoid knight was not happy that his own personal matters had been dragged into the spotlight by Kylo Ren.

“You want power,” the Knight stated when he and Hux spoke alone. “I want to kill Kylo Ren. We are agreed?”

So Hux had made a deal with the Knight. He would be part of the ‘rescue’ attempt and be the one to make sure Kylo Ren was dead.

Not striking immediately had other benefits. Watching the Jedi girl admit, what Hux had long suspected, that Kylo Ren had, in fact, killed Supreme Leader Snoke, freed Hux to act as he needed. He no longer had to worry about covering up Kylo Ren’s death.

That brought another of the Knights out of the woodwork. He was a little distraught when Kassa Ren managed to find the fleet’s hiding place. It spoke of a gap in security. No doubt she’d been in contact with Volo. Hux would have to deal with that once Kylo Ren was dead.

Regardless Kassa Ren had a similar request.

“I want a piece of Kylo Ren,” she told Hux.

“You’ll have to take that up with Volo Ren. I already promised him he could kill Kylo.”

“You misunderstood,” the female Knight said. There as no knowing under that helmet, but Hux had the distance impression she was smiling. “I want a literal piece of him. After he’s dead is fine, as long as it's fresh.”

Years of serving Snoke had made Hux a hard person rattle. Even so, he had to surpass a shudder at her words. Hux didn’t actually know what species Kassa Ren was beneath her helmet, the General had assumed she was human. Now he couldn’t help wonder if she wasn’t part of a more carnivorous species. Or was this some terrible Darksider ritual. Did she think she could somehow absorb Kylo Ren’s power?

It didn’t matter. Hux would deal with the Knight’s later, once Kylo was dead.

“As long as I have proof he’s dead,” Hux told her. “You can have as many pieces as you want.”

All that was left to do was wait.

The last few days were the worst. Armitage almost changed his mind about waiting to hear the verdict; did it really matter? Then again, seeing what the Resistance would do could provide valuable insight into the enemy. Not that any of them would be left alive.

So he waited. He waited until the jury began reading out the charges, then he gave the order for the fleet to move. It should time out almost perfectly. The verdict would be given, and the attack would happen. Soon Kylo Ren would be dead, and Armitage Hux would officially be Supreme Leader of the First Order.


	2. Anger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _People read about old Samson, as far back as his birth  
>  He was the strongest man that ever lived on earth  
> One day while Samson's walking, walking alone  
> Looked down on the ground and saw an old jawbone  
> And he stretched out his arms and his chains broke like thread  
> When he got to move, ten thousand men was dead_
> 
> -Samson and Delilah, folk song version [by Shirley Mason](<a%20href=)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for all the comments at the end of part one and this first chapter of this. I wasn't originally going to post today, but your comments inspired me.

The ground was a scorched crater, cracked near the center where the TIE bombers had managed to cause part of the underground base’s roof to collapse in on itself.

Dirt slowly slid down the walls of the new depression to fill in the cavern that had been a courtroom minutes earlier.

And then the earth moved. It wasn’t a further collapse. Instead, the soil and rocks jumped up, as if a giant fist was pounding them from below. Once, twice, and then suddenly dirt and rocks shot into the air, forced upward by an underground explosion.

But it wasn’t an explosion caused by fire, or pressure, at least not the physical kind. It was an explosion fueled by anger, as Kylo Ren pulled himself up out of the earth.

He was angry because Hux had come with the First Order to kill him. It wasn’t unexpected, but it still made him angry. 

He was angry because that fool of a judge thought a blaster could kill him. Kylo Ren had been deflecting blaster bolts since he was a boy.

He didn’t need a lightsaber to do it; instead, he’d blocked the blast with the binders they’d put on him to block his access to the Force. It was true that the sides of his hands were now painfully burnt from the blast, but it had also destroyed whatever mechanism kept him from the Force. It had set him free.

It still made him angry.

He was angry at the jury, who thought they could understand and judge him. Who’d had the nerve to say that what he’d done to his father wasn’t murder. It wasn’t for them to absolve him of that.

He was angry at his mother, who had, of all things, called him ‘my baby-boy’ in front of the whole Galaxy and had the nerve to pretend she cared.

He was angry at the his lawyer, who he hoped was slowly being crushed to death by the rubble (Kylo had raised his own Force shield to protect himself when the ceiling collapsed, but he had not thought to protect anyone else), who had called Rey to the stand when he’d told him not to.

Who’d questioned her until she’d revealed that he was the one who had killed Snoke, not her. In many ways, Kylo supposed he could blame this attack on Hennis. Hux was no doubt delighted with the excuse to kill Kylo, and the Resistance in one fell swoop.

And he was angry at Rey. Rey, who had been cold and distant ever since they’d left the planet, Garnik V, where they had been stranded. Who was carrying his child, but wanted to kill the baby because it was his. Rey, who he trusted and loved, and left him alone in a cell to rot.

Kylo Ren had no shortage of anger. And that was good. Because anger would fuel him, anger would keep him alive.

He rolled his shoulders, testing and stretching muscles that ached from confinement. At the same time, he extended his senses, finding his place within the Force, which he’d been cut off from for so long.

Without trying, he found Rey.

She was still alive.

Good.

For a moment, he thought of reaching out to her with the Force. Of asking if she was okay. But her signature was strong, so was that of the baby.

And Rey had a tendency to calm his anger. He couldn’t afford that, not now. No, right now, Kylo Ren needed his anger. It was, after all, what gave him strength.

* * *

“Rey?” Leia called out in concern as she witnessed the young girl use her power to hold the collapsing ceiling in place. 

Once again, Leia was reminded both how much raw power the girl had, and how little training. What Rey was doing now holding all those individual pieces of rock and cement in place, stretched the bounds of possibility.

It was also not necessary.

Rey was going to wear her self out prematurely. And Leia was willing to bet they were going to need her in whatever fight was ahead.

Moments like this, Leia could have slapped her brother for not training this girl in the basics.

She put her hand on Rey’s should. Leia was no Jedi, but she had learned a thing or two before she’d left that path behind her to be with Han.

Leia reached out to form a shield directly in front of Rey. It was a much easier task to create a single shield to hold back everything than to worry about concentrating on every piece of earth that could crash down on them.

Rey understood in an instant and shifted. For just a second, the ceiling seemed about to fall on them again as Rey stopped trying to suspend all the rubble in the air, and instead raised a barrier around everyone to keep the falling earth back.

Knowing Rey was more capable of this than her, Leia released her own shield and looked at the startled Resistance members who were in awe of the young Jedi who had just kept them from being crushed to death.

“Okay, people, less staring, more moving,” Leia ordered.

That got Poe’s attention. “You heard the General. We’re evacuating, get to the hanger now,” the young Commander barked.

That got everyone moving. Leia remained near the back, making sure Rey was okay since she was required to be the last to leave the collapsing courtroom. Once they were clear, Rey dropped her shield, and everyone turned to look at the sounds of cement and earth crashing down to fill in the empty space they had all occupied moments ago.

But there was no time to worry about that; a First Order attack was underway, and any moment another bombing run could happen.

Thank the Force, Leia thought, that they had left the main Resistance force at their other base. They were only a skeleton crew here. Not that it wouldn’t be devastating if she Poe, Finn, and Rey were all lost at once. But the Resistance was bigger than it’s most famous members, Leia firmly believed that.

Besides, Leia Organa had been through worse than this. This was not how she died.

They were all tense, as they ran through the halls towards the hanger, any moment another attack could come. But so far, the base had stopped shaking. 

And then they spilled out into the underground hanger, only to discover they weren’t the first to get there. A semi-circle of stormtroopers waited for them, commanded by two helmeted figures in black.

“Hey guys,” Poe said unflustered. “What’s up? I parked just over there so if you don’t mind. . . “

“Why does it speak?” one of the Knight’s of Ren said, tilting its head curiously to the side.

Leia had never been able to learn much of the Knights of Ren. But she knew who this one was. She had seen him in holos as he slaughtered his own people. This was Volo Ren, one of the insect-like Silian race.

“It’s called bravado,” the other Knight said. The modulated voice seemed to be female. “It’s not impressive.”

“Where is Kylo Ren?” Volo Ren asked.

Before anyone else could answer, Rey, stepped forward. “He’s dead. He was crushed by a cave-in when the attack started.”

Leia knew her son wasn’t dead. She would have felt it. She suspected Rey knew it too.

“It thinks it is a Jedi. It thinks we are stupid.” Volo said. 

The insect Knight raised one of his four hands, and Leia could tell he was directing the Force at Rey, but she didn’t flinch or move.

“If you think that will work on me,” Rey said. “Then, yes, I think you’re stupid. Your Master can’t invade my mind, you think you can?”

“Kylo Ren is not our Master,” the female Knight said. “Not anymore.”

“It doesn’t really matter,” Poe interjected. “Because you caved in our base, and if he isn’t dead, he’s on the other side of the cave in. But hey, feel free to go dig him out.”

The female Knight turned her attention towards Poe, and he fell to his knees, grunting in pain.

“Stop that!” Rey demanded, igniting her lightsaber while raising her other hand, threateningly towards the Knight.

Almost as one, the Stormtroopers trained their blasters on Rey.

“Damn, Hux,” the female Knight said, releasing Poe. “We’ll have to dig him out. Unless. . .” She suddenly regarded Rey. “Maybe we don’t need him at all.”

“We need pieces,” Volo said. “We promised the Master we would bring him pieces of Kylo Ren.”

“Look at her,” the female Knight said. “She’s already got a piece of him. And this will speed things up by at least a few months. We may already have a vessel.”

Volo Ren made a series of chittering noises as he regarded Rey. “It is not what was asked for.”

The female Knight sighed. “Fine you go dig up your piece, I’ll bring the Emperor mine, we’ll see which he likes better.”

Those words sent ice through Leia’s veins. Was Hux styling himself Emperor now? That had to be it, and yet…

“You’re not taking anything,” Rey said, moving into a battle stance.

The stormtrooper’s all tensed in response. 

“Idiots,” the female Knight said. “Don’t aim at her, aim at them.”

A moment ago, Leia had been glad she’d just taught Rey how to make a shield. The stormtrooper’s blasters were not likely to be a threat to the young Jedi. But the remaining Resistance fighters weren’t positioned well for Rey to shield them all. The Knight was smart. She knew Rey wouldn’t want to put her friends in danger. And the twenty blasters arranged in a semi-circle around them were certainly that.

The stormtrooper’s adjusted their aim, and it had the intended effect. Rey hesitated, relaxing her stance just a bit.

“Here’s how it’s going to go, Jedi,” the female Knight explained. “You come with me, and we won’t execute your friends on the spot. They can be prisoners instead.”

“If I go with you, and you let them go,” Rey countered.

One of the stormtroopers jerked awkwardly as the female Knight raised her hand. The blaster fired, and Morta, who’d been brought to the base to help guard Kylo, fell down dead.

“Do you want to keep negotiating?” the Knight asked.

Rey hesitated. “How do I know they won’t fire as soon as we are gone.”

“Rey don’t,” Finn protested. 

“You will bring the Resistance members to Hux as prisoners,” the Knight intoned. 

“We will bring the resistance members to Hux as prisoners.” The stormtroopers repeated in unison.

“Happy?” the Knight said.

Rey extinguished her lightsaber and nodded, casting a sad look back at Morta’s dead form.

“Stop her,” Finn said, looking first to Poe, then to Leia.

She could only sadly shake her head. If Leia had learned one thing in life, it was there was always a chance to escape. You just had to wait for the right moment. The last thing she wanted to do was to let Rey leave with the Knight. But she knew Rey was a survivor, and so was Leia.


	3. Honey in the Lion's Head

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Well Samson and the lion got entwined in a fight  
>  And Samson he jumped up and took on the lion's might  
> You all know just how a lion can kill a man with his paws  
> Well Samson got his hands up round that lion's jaws  
> And he ripped that beast and he killed him dead  
> And the bees made honey in the lion's head_
> 
> -Samson and Delilah, folk song version [by Shirley Mason](<a%20href=)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, it's December...

Kylo was not normally one to be indecisive. And yet for the moment, he couldn’t decide how to act. He wanted, no he _needed_ his lightsaber. The entire strength of the First Order had come to kill him. Well, perhaps not the entire fleet, but as he watched the two TIE’s circle back around to fire at him, he thought how much more satisfying this would be if he could deflect their bolts with his weapon.

Instead, he had to settle for using the Force to crash one of them into the other.

Watching the two TIE’s should have been more satisfying than it was. Instead, it reminded Kylo of his conflicting priorities, find Rey and take back his place as Supreme Leader of the First Order.

Both of those would likely be aided by his lightsaber, but as best he could tell, it had been buried in the first bombing run.

Before he could make up his mind about how to proceed, a new distraction appeared, in the form of Volo Ren.

Although the Silian’s emotions were often hard to decipher, there was no mistaking the other Knight’s intent, as wordlessly, he charged Kylo with his lightsaber.

“Hello, Volo,” Kylo said as he dodged out of the way of the first blow.

He received no response, only a flurry of attacks.

And Kylo realized he didn’t have time for this. Letting Volo maintain the offensive was dangerous, considering Kylo had no weapon of his own.

At least not a physical one, and Kylo was already flush with the Force, letting the Dark Side course through him, something no doubt Volo had sensed immediately and was prepared for.

So, Kylo Ren let go. He let all the power he’d been gathering to himself drop away right as Volo came in for another attack.

It startled the Silian who’s strike became just enough off-balance that he overextended.

Kylo darted behind Volo, grabbed his arm and yanked it back, even as he struck with his other hand at the spot on Volo’s shoulder where the two sections of the Silian’s exoskeleton met. 

In many ways, the Silian’s were more resilient than other species. Their exoskeletons served as natural armor, nearly impossible to pierce with most weapons and capable of shrugging off most blasters. But they had their weak points. The connective tissue that bound their joints together was fragile.

Kylo heard Volo scream, as his upper arm dropped limply to his side. Kylo hadn’t entirely ripped the limb lose, but it might never be functional again.

More importantly, Volo dropped his lightsaber. Before the Knight could recover from his pain, and use it to his advantage, Kylo reached out, and the discarded weapon leapt into his hand.

He didn’t let Volo suffer long. With one sure stroke, he decapitated his former Knight. Kylo didn’t know why Volo had turned against him and didn’t especially care. He was simply another obstacle in Kylo’s way, and no doubt far from the last person, Kylo would have to kill if he was to take back control of the First Order.

He looked down at his hand. At least now he had a lightsaber, even if it wasn’t his. Although…

He reached out to sense the crystal in his lightsaber. He could feel the point where it called to him from below the earth.

It only took a moment to open the side chamber on Volo’s lightsaber and flip the stabilizing loop.

A moment later, he planted the lightsaber in the ground, and backing away to a safe distance, he used the Force to trigger the activator. As it turned out, he had an explosive device after all.

* * *

As soon as the troop transport doors opened, Leia’s eyes were already darting around, taking in the layout of the Star Destroyer, thinking about escape.

Of course, the few hundred armed stormtroopers that stood in formation behind General Hux meant that this might not be the best moment. But when the time came, Leia was not going to let it pass her by.

“Well, well,” Hux said as they were forced to their knees. “So, this is how the Resistance ends.”

“The Resistance is bigger than us,” Poe said defiantly. “It doesn’t end with us.”

Leia was quietly glad that he hadn’t said something along the lines of, ‘You can kill us, but the Resistance won’t die.’ The first rule of escape was to delay your execution, not encourage it.

“You really think we’re all that’s left of the Resistance?” Leia challenged Hux.

“I don't see the Jedi. Is she dead?” Hux asked the Captain who had captured them.

“One of the Knights took her, Sir.” The Captain responded.

Whatever Hux was about to say, he was interrupted by another stormtrooper. “Volo Ren’s ship is requesting permission to dock.”

Hux smiled. “You are so brave and defiant, General,” he said to Leia. “Well see how long that bravado lasts when I show you the head of, what did you call him, ‘Your baby-boy?’”

Leia hoped the look of surprise on her face, would pass for concern. Ben wasn’t dead. She’d know if he was. Just thinking of him in danger made her reflexively reach out to find his Force signature, something easy to do when he was this close, and getting closer.

She almost pitted Hux then. She could feel her son approaching, he was a ball of power and dark fury. But Hux, not being Force-sensitive, couldn’t feel the pure unadulterated anger that was hurtling through the atmosphere towards him.

“What no witty come back?” Hux asked. “I’m told it’s a terrible thing for a parent to outlive their child. But don’t worry, you won’t outlive him by much.”

Leia resolutely kept quiet. She didn't believe that Ben was coming to save them. He was no likely returning to the First Order for his own purposes. But that didn’t mean that it might not give her and the other’s a great cover to escape. 

Whatever plan he might have, she wasn’t going to warn Hux about it. 

The First Order shuttle landed, and the ramp came down. There was a strange sound, half metal on metal, and half soft thud as something was tossed from the inside of the shuttle and bounced and rolled down the ramp.

The helmet of a Knight of Ren came to a stop on the ground just outside the shuttle ramp. It settled into place, then the visor popped open, revealing a non-human face.

“Hux!” her son’s voice bellowed and echoed loudly through the docking bay of the Star Destroyer. “Where is she? Where is Rey?”

He strode down the shuttle ramp, his dark grey Alderian robes billowing behind him, lightsaber in hand.

It was very dramatic. It also showed no sign of Ben actually having a plan.

‘Why does he have to take after his father in this way?’ Leia wondered sadly.

“Fire!” Hux commanded. Without hesitation, the two platoons of stormtroopers that were lined up behind the General took out their blasters.

Before they could fire, Ben raised his hand, and there was the sound of metal groaning. Just as the first row of Stormtroopers knelt in preparation to fire, a TIE fighter yanked itself free from its mooring and crashed into them, scattering the soldiers.

Chaos erupted as the Stormtroopers still on their feet tried to fire, and others scrambled to get out of the way, as the TIE swung back around to crash into them once again.

A memory washed over Leia. Her little boy, sitting on the floor of his room, a model of his father’s ship in his hands as he knocked over toy stormtroopers and made little, “Pew-Pew” noises between saying things like, “Take that Vader.” And “The Rebels will always win.”

But he wasn’t a little boy, and these weren’t tin soldiers. They were real men and women that he was casually maiming, and she wondered if she should have always known they would end up here.

But she didn’t have time to dwell on it. If there had ever been an opportunity to escape, this was it. She wasn’t the only one who realized it. Poe and Finn were already on their feet, turning against their startled guards.

Leia followed suit, and soon she had a blaster in her hand.

An agonizing scream of scraping metal filled the air, as Ben used the Force to drag a transport across the ground to use as a barrier between him and a new rush of reinforcements that were flooding in.

The resistance members all realized the same thing at once. The only undamaged ship near them that could fit them all was the one the Ben had just left. He was preoccupied with the stormtroopers that were trying to kill him, but he was also the focus of all their fire. 

If they ran for the shuttle, there was every chance that they might be hit by a stray blaster bolt meant for him, or even by one of the ones he was deflecting with his lightsaber.

It was still better to risk it than to say here. The Resistance members all moved to rush towards the shuttle.

Just as Leia ran past her son, she stopped and changed direction. It was probably stupid to come that close to her son. He was the center of a maelstrom of blaster fire directed by the swirling red plasma of his lightsaber.

But she couldn’t just leave him.

Somehow she managed to come up slightly behind him without being hit. She put her hand on his arm.

He didn’t bother to look at her, but pulled his arm away violently, trying to make it look like he was just trying to fling another ship at the oncoming soldiers.

“She’s not here,” Leia found herself saying.

She knew Ben would never come because she asked. She had to give him a reason that he could think of as his own. Otherwise, eventually, he would wear out. Even he couldn’t take on an entire Star Destroyer by himself. And she couldn’t leave him to die.

He glanced down at her then, a question in his eyes.

“Rey, one of the Knights, took her, but not here. I don’t think it was under Hux’s orders.”

“General!” Poe was yelling at her to follow. “Leave him.”

And Leia suddenly realized that she wouldn’t. She couldn’t.

She was no longer the young idealistic Princess willing to take on the entire Empire because it was the right thing to do. Principles alone were no longer enough for her. She had lost her husband and her brother. As much as she cared for the other members of the Resistance, they weren’t actually family.

There were others who could protect the Galaxy now. She just needed to protect what little she had left.

When Ben made no move to come with her, she yelled back to Poe, “Get out of here, Commander. Get the others to safety.”

She raised the blaster she’d taken off one of her guards, and took out a couple of stormtroopers who were trying to get into position on one of the upper levels the docking bay. 

Finally, Ben looked at her, although it was with the sort of annoyance that only a son could have for his mother.

“Fine,” was all he said as he began to pull back towards the shuttle. “But you will tell me everything you know about where they took Rey.”

Leia nodded, half disbelieving that he was actually coming with her.

She continued to lay down cover fire as they pull back towards the waiting shuttle. 

It wasn’t until the ramp began to close that she realized that she should be grateful that the other’s hadn’t decided to leave them both behind.


	4. Conservation of Energy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo learns how Rey was taken and begins to speculate on her fate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you wish to believe that the Ewok’s are happily living their best Ewok lives than you should probably stop reading after Leia says
> 
> _Endor’s as good a detour as any and the Ewok’s will help us out._

The First Order should have knelt before Kylo Ren. They should have seen the raw power he commanded and followed him the way they had followed Snoke.

But they didn’t. Hux gave orders, and the First Order obeyed. And why? Not out of love, they certainly had not loved Snoke. They had followed him out of fear and respect for his power. So why would they not follow Kylo Ren?

It was a question for another time. And possibly the answer was simply that Hux’s conditioning of the stormtroopers was just too intense. Despite the defection of FN-2187, the other stormtroopers didn’t have enough will to do anything other than follow Hux to their deaths.

Even so, it rankled Kylo Ren that he’d had to flee a Star Destroyer with his mother. He had to remind himself that he had more pressing priorities at the moment. He needed to find Rey, and right now, his mother seemed like the best way to do that.

Also, he needed to know what was happening with his Knights. He hadn’t dwelt on the fact that Volo Ren had tried to kill him, but maybe he should have. 

“Tell me what happened,” he ordered his mother at the moment that the pilot, Poe Dameron, said, “Do we really want to bring him?”

“Poe, fly,” his mother commanded before turning her attention back to Kylo. “Rey traded herself to one of the knights to save us.”

He wondered what definition of 'save' ended up with the Resistance as First Order prisoners, but it did sound like Rey. What he needed to know was which of his knights it had been.

“Show me,” he demanded.

He could have tried to simply force his way into his mother’s mind. But he wasn’t sure that he wanted to see whatever stray thoughts she had. It was better if she simply opened up to him.

“Please,” she said. “Show me, please.”

He wanted to snap at her, but he also didn’t want to draw more attention to the fact that she was reprimanding him as if he were a child.

Instead, he lowered his voice, vainly hoping the others wouldn’t hear. “Please,” he repeated quietly.

He heard the traitor snicker and was about to turn on him and strangle him when he felt his mother’s hand on his shoulder. She caught his eye, and he knew she was letting him in.

Reminding himself that Rey and the child she was carrying were what was important, he refocused and accepted the memory his mother was trying to show him.

He instantly recognized Kassa Ren, which was surprising. She was the last of his Knights that he would have expected to join Volo in a personal vendetta.

But as he heard her words, a chill ran down his spine. His Knight’s couldn’t really be that foolish, could they?

“What is it?” his mother asked. Yet he could feel her own worry.

“Are you sure that’s what she said. Are you sure she said Emperor?” he asked with a growing sense of dread.

“Honestly, I’m just surprised it’s taking you guys this long to start calling someone Emperor,” Poe yelled from the cockpit. “I mean, what’s a Supreme Leader supposed to be anyway?”

The look in his mother’s eyes told him how sure she was. She didn’t take that word lightly.

Kylo moved towards the cockpit, ignoring his mother as she tried to stop him.

“This isn’t the time to be picking meaningless fights,” she insisted. 

He wasn’t sure if she was talking to him, or to Poe, but it didn’t matter. He could care less about the Resistance pilot’s irreverent tone. It was the controls of the shuttle cared about.

Poe was busy dodging TIE fighters and trying to put a safe distance between them and the Star Destroyer before they entered hyperspace.

Dislodging the pilot from his chair under the circumstances wasn’t a good idea. So grudgingly, Kylo Ren took the co-pilot’s seat.

Quickly he entered the coordinates where he suspected Kassa Ren was taking Rey. Then he inputted a code that only he knew into the friend or foe system of the shuttle.

As intended, the TIE’s stopped firing. For the moment, the First Order weapons were incapable of firing anywhere near the shuttle.

“What the..?” Poe asked.

“I knew Hux would betray me someday,” Kylo said indifferently. “There’s no way I was going to let him shoot me down with my own ships. That being said, no doubt, they’ll figure out how to override the firing systems soon.”

“So, let’s not hang around for that.” The pilot glanced at the coordinates Kylo had entered and shrugged. “So that’s where your secret base is? Seems like a bad choice. Although I never would have guessed it.”

“Secret base?” Kylo asked. “We are the First Order, we don’t have secret bases.”

“Yeah, I don’t think your First Order anymore,” the traitor had the nerve to say from behind Kylo. “They’re not really the forgiving type, and you just wrecked the inside of Hux’s ship.”

“And what was Starkiller if not a secret base?” Poe added.

Kylo felt like everyone was pressing in too closely about him. He wasn’t used to people speaking to him this casually. People kept their distance from him, avoided him. And he was comfortable with that. The need to push everyone back away from him rose up.

“Let’s not worry about that now,” he heard his mother say. “What we need to do is find Rey. Where would your knight have taken her?”

His mother’s words refocused him and reminded him why he was here on this cramped shuttle with his enemies. 

“To their new Master,” he said. “They’re taking her to the Emperor. They’re taking her to the Moon of Endor.”

“Uh, you do know the Emperor is dead, right?” Poe said. But even so, he sent the shuttle into hyperspace without adjusting the coordinates. “It was kind of a big deal when it happened.”

“I know he’s dead,” Kylo agreed. “That’s what makes him so dangerous.”

Kassa Ren’s words echoed in his mind.

_“She’s already got a piece of him. And this will speed things up by at least a few months. We may already have a vessel.”_

They said Darth Sidious had been obsessed with immortality. Death was not likely to have swayed the Sith Lord from that path.

“That’s not how death works,” Poe insisted.

For a moment, Kylo debated whether it was less trouble to throw everyone out of an airlock or to explain to a bunch of Force ignorant people the metaphysics of death and the Force.

Deciding he didn’t want to risk damaging the ship before he got to Endor, he searched for a metaphor that they would understand.

“Please tell me you know the first law of thermodynamics,” Kylo said to the pilot.

“Delta U equals Q minus W,” a woman said.

Kylo turned. Up to this point, he had ignored the other Resistance members that had been captured with his mother. He had no idea who the woman in the coveralls with the short black hair was, except that her uniform identified her Commander Tico.

As he looked at her, she shrunk away from him, and the traitor moved protectively in front of her.

She swallowed but continued, “Or in a closed system, energy can neither be created or destroyed, only transformed.”

He nodded. “Yes, well, the entirety of the universe is a closed system. And death, it’s only a transformation. But if you’ve spent a lifetime mastering the energy of the Force inside yourself, for instance, if you are one of the most powerful Sith Lords in history, you can tether your energy to some sort of object and maintain your consciousness past death.”

“You’re saying the old Emperor is a ghost?” the Tico said, her eyes going wide.

“Rose, there are no such things as ghosts,” the traitor said kindly to her.

“No, there are,” his mother spoke up. “But I thought only Jedi could manifest themselves like that after death.”

Kylo shrugged. “Supposedly the Jedi Masters are watching over us able to manifest at will. I’ve never seen it.” He added derisively. “But the Sith can tether themselves to an object after death. And Palpatine did just that. He’s on Endor, and that’s where Kassa Ren is taking Rey.”

“Okay, hold on a moment,” Finn interrupted. “Even if there are Sith ghosts or whatever, isn’t it a big leap to assume from one comment that the Knights of Ren are working for a dead Emperor now, and that’s where they are taking Rey?”

Kylo sighed, “Look, Kassa mentioned a Master, and it’s not me. She would only follow the orders of a powerful Dark Side user. That doesn’t leave many options.”

“Okay, if there are ghosts, though, why not Snoke’s ghost? Why jump straight to the Emperor?” the Tico asked.

“Because I made sure to destroy anything and everything Snoke might have tethered himself to,” Kylo explained.

“It doesn’t matter,” his mother interrupted. “We need to regroup, and we’re not heading to the main base until we’re sure First Order isn’t tracking us. Endor’s as good a detour as any, and the Ewok’s will help us out.”

Kylo couldn’t help but chuckle at the rude surprise that awaited his mother on Endor.

It did not go unnoticed. “What?” the General demanded.

“You’re beloved Ewok’s are dead, mother.” He enjoyed using the endearment while taunting her like this. “Bad things happen when you leave a moon-sized military base in an unstable orbit over a technologically backward moon.”

Kylo could see the color drain from her face as she started to consider the possibilities. He decided there was no reason to leave her in suspense.

“I don’t know how long it took,” he told her. “But without a crew and with all the damage you and your Rebel friends did to the Death Star it probably didn’t take all that long for its orbit to decay enough for it to collide with the moon. 

“Do you know what happens when something that big crashes into another celestial body? There’s the impact, of course, that alone would kill everything for hundreds of kilometers around the crash zone. But the collision would also have thrown massive amounts of dirt and rock into the atmosphere with enough force to turn stone into glass.

“And as those millions of glass spheres slowed down, the heat that created them would dissipate superheating the atmosphere of the moon, turning it into an oven. In minutes the temperature of the moon would have reached nearly 100 Celcius, instantly cooking every living thing.

“Finally the heaviest of the debris would have fallen back down, a rain of hot glass that would have cut through anything that had survived the initial furnace and set all the forests on fire. 

“As for the rest, it stayed in the atmosphere, creating an unnatural cloud that would grow to block out the sun and led to winter that will likely last several more decades.

“So no mother, the Ewok’s aren't to going to help us out.”

“You don’t know that,” she said weakly. 

It surprised him. He’d never heard anything but strength in his mother’s voice. He felt a pang of guilt for hurting her in this way. He could have simply told her that the crash of the Death Star had killed everything. He hadn't needed to go into such detail.

He tried to remind himself that he was only telling her the truth. That it was her carelessness that had led to the extinction-level event on Endor. But the look of pain on her face made him feel ashamed. Even if none of it was his fault.

“I do know it,” he said, although much more gently. “I’ve been to Endor. I’ve seen it. And I’ve felt how all that death fed Palpatine’s ghost, his presence is oppressive. I’m not speculating that he’s a ghost. I know it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So when I saw the crashed Death Star in one of the promos I instantly thought about this podcast description of the [end of the dinosaurs](https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/dinopocalypse-redux)
> 
> Kylo's science may be a little off, but then he's not a scientist.
> 
> Also, this was was the chapter I wanted to get to before TROS came out before we find out things are not so grim on Endor (assuming it was that crashed Death Star we saw). 
> 
> I also intended to have revealed more of what my Palpatine is up to, but it broke up the flow. And I'm happy with the hints that are there. That being said, I have Monday off, so I'm going to post another chapter Monday to keep me distracted while waiting for TROS.


	5. The Ghost Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leia is forced to deal with the Ghosts of her past on Endor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you still want to believe things have worked out for the Ewoks, I would skip down to:
> 
> _She could still hear it, the Ewok horns proclaiming their victory, the music and happy chatter of the feasting._
> 
> Otherwise as promised here's another chapter to keep us all away from the dangers of TROS spoilers ;)

The Moon of Endor had been the first place Leia had ever actively reached out to feel the Force. Her brother had shown her how to after their victory over the Emperor. Endor had been a living, vibrant place in those days, the Force surrounded her in a warm web of life and death.

But now there wasn’t even death. Something had to be left alive for there to be death.

There was only snow and ashes.

Ben had been right. The Moon of Endor was now dead, and it was Leia’s fault. 

Why had they never considered what would happen to the Death Star? Why had they just left it here?

She knew the answer. She could still remember the celebrations when the Emperor died. It had seemed like victory.

But five more years of war lay ahead of them. Killing the Emperor had not killed the Empire.

And so the war continued, and they forgot about Endor.

And then the work of rebuilding the New Republic began, and they forgot about Endor. 

And quietly, when no one was watching, the Death Star destroyed another world.

From Ben’s description, she had expected to feel Palpatine’s presence like a cloud over the moon. But there was nothing other than the memory of what had been.

“General?” Poe asked her from the ramp of the shuttle.

“Just give me a moment,” she said.

She didn’t deserve to just turn around and leave. She needed to feel this, to accept what she’d done in her carelessness so that it would never happen again.

She could still hear it, the Ewok horns proclaiming their victory, the music, and happy chatter of the feasting. 

And Han.

The awkward moment when he’d tried to step aside for Luke before he learned that Luke was her brother. The first night they had spent together, flush with victory. If she closed her eyes, she could still feel his lips, his hands. 

But Han was gone now. Luke was gone now. Everything and everyone from that day was gone.

Then she heard the crunch of heavy boots behind her, and it snapped her out of her self pity. 

No, everyone was not gone. Chewie, Threepio, and Artoo had all stayed on the main Resistance base. They were fine.

And more importantly, there was Ben. She had made countless mistakes over the years. Them most recent was when she had helped to arrange his trial because she was afraid that her own judgment couldn’t be trusted. 

The fact that it had ended in a First Order attack wasn’t her fault, but she could still hear the closing arguments. 

_Ben Solo chose his ideals over his father._

Was that just one more thing he’d gotten from her? Was it all the times she’d chosen the Senate over her son, telling herself she was doing it to make a better Galaxy for him, that had led him down this path?

She didn’t know, because in so many ways she didn’t know him.

But that was something she could change.

“Why did you come here?” she asked.

“We should be able to sense him. Palpatine must have left the moon.” He said.

“No, before, why did you come here before?” she glanced up at him.

Her son's eyes met hers, and he hesitated. She could see in his face that he knew his words would cause her pain, and he was unsure if he should say them.

She had seen a similar empathy on the way here. He had looked ashamed after his graphic description of Endor’s destruction. It was not unlike the look he wore as a child when Ben was trying to lie about something he knew he shouldn’t have done.

Maybe he wasn’t entirely a stranger. And more importantly, if he could feel empathy and shame, there was still hope for him.

When she didn’t look away, he said, “I came looking for my grandfather.”

He had been right. The words were like a punch to the gut.

They had never talked about Vader. She had tried to reach out to Ben when her secret had been revealed, but he’d been on a mission with Luke. All she’d been able to do was leave him a recorded message.

He never called her back. She had never known for sure if he’d even listened to her message or if he’d felt too betrayed by her secrecy to care what she had to say.

She wasn’t going to run from this anymore.

“What did you hope to find here?” she asked.

“Him,” Ben said simply. “He was too powerful not to leave something behind. I found his helmet, it was burned, whether that happened when he crashed into this moon or when the Death Star did, I don’t know.”

Her eyes went wide as she realized just how little he knew. She’d always assumed that at least Luke had been there to tell him the things she’d never had the courage to. 

“You thought he’d be a Sith ghost?” she asked, wanting to be sure she’d understood him.

“Of course, he—” the look of sadness in her eyes stopped him.

“Luke didn’t tell you anything, did he?” the question was meant to be rhetorical.

“It wasn’t his responsibility,” Ben accused her.

“No, it wasn’t," she agreed sadly. "But even so, he probably could have explained about Anakin better than I could. After all, he was there at the end. How is it you think Vader-your grandfather died?” It hurt to call Vader that. But she could see it was important to Ben. 

He looked at her puzzled as if the answer should be obvious. “In the Rebel attack against the Death Star.”

She nodded. She’d always assumed that Luke had told him the full story, not the vague one in the history books.

“He died fighting the Emperor. He chose Luke, his son, over his Master. His helmet was burned because we… Luke insisted we cremate him. That we treat him as the Jedi hero, he died as, not…” she stopped herself.

She wanted to say ‘What he really was.’ Despite everything Luke had told her about their father’s end, she couldn’t ever convince herself that he had been redeemed. That he died Anakin Skywalker, hero of the Clone Wars. He would always be Darth Vader to her. The man who had tortured her, destroyed her homeworld, encased Han in carbonate, and who had recognized that Luke was his son, but never realized she was his daughter.

“But you don’t believe it?” Ben asked. “You don’t believe he died a ‘Jedi hero’?”

“I…I’m not as forgiving as Luke," he snorted when she said that. "I believed him when he said that Anakin turned at the end. And I’m grateful. I’m grateful he killed the Emperor, I’m grateful that he saved Luke. But I can’t forgive him.”

She hated saying those words, a little voice in the back of her head said that she should lie. That she should say that Vader had returned to the light, and all had been forgiven. But lying to her son had helped bring them to this place.

He nodded and started to turn away, she placed her hand on his cheek to stop him.

“Which is why I’ll understand,” she told him. “If you can’t forgive me. But I will always love you, Ben.”

He pulled back, almost as if she’d slapped him. “It’s Kylo,” he said. “And we’re wasting time here.” He turned and used his long legs to stride back to the shuttle, making it hard for her to catch up. “I should have realized that they would need to take the Emperor somewhere else. They’d need a more advanced medical facility.”

“Well, that should be easy to find,” Poe said from the doorway to the shuttle.

Leia wondered if he’d been listening the whole time, or just keeping an eye on her son.

“How many facilities can there be that cater to ghosts?” Poe added.

She couldn’t blame Poe for his skepticism. Yet there was also clearly more going on than she knew.

“Why would they need medical facilities?” she asked. “What aren’t you telling us?”

His eyes narrowed as he looked at her. “You should be asking what was it is that Rey didn’t tell you. I’m not really sure it’s my place…” he said with feigned innocence.

There was a lot she was willing to put up with from him. This did not fall into that category. “Do you want to find Rey or not? Because right now, we’re all you’ve got.”

“That’s a good point,” Finn said, coming from deeper in the ship. “Why are we helping _him_ find Rey? I’m mean so far all he’s done is lead us to a dead moon. Why do we think he can help?”

“To begin with, Rey and I have a bond…Kriff!” He strode further into the ship, and without saying another word, sat down in a meditative pose.

“What’s he doing? And what does he mean bond?” Finn whispered to Leia.

“He’s meditating,” Leia said helplessly. He was doing more than that, but her own Force training was insufficient for Leia to understand precisely what.

For a few moments, no one said anything and simply watched as the former Supreme Leader meditated in the middle of the loading bay of the shuttle.

“So yeah,” Poe said, breaking the silence. “Maybe we should go somewhere useful, you know somewhere we can ditch this ship in favor something a little less First Order chic?”

“I think I’ve disabled any tracking devices,” Rose added helpfully.

“What about the data banks?” Poe said thoughtfully. “We might as well pull any information we can from the shuttle while we have it.”

“On it,” Rose said, hurrying towards the nearest computer terminal.

“So, uh General…” Poe began. “About him…” before he could finish, Ben made a sort of annoyed growl in the back of his throat and stood up.

Realizing everyone was looking at him, he said, “She’s unconscious.”

“And you know that how?” Finn asked.

“Because Rey and I have a Force bond. Weren’t you listening?”

“Wait so you can track her?” Finn asked, hopefully.

“If I could track her,” Ben replied, annoyed. “I would have been able to track down the Resistance after you fled from Crait. But once she wakes up, she can tell me where she is. Unless…unless they intend to keep her in a medically induced coma. That would be more practical.”

“Practical?” Finn exclaimed. “I’m sorry, let me ask again, why are we helping him find Rey?”

“Wait since Crait?” Poe asked. “You’ve had this bond thing since Crait?”

Poe’s question was reasonable, but Leia could also see that Poe was walking into a trap that Ben had set for him. One designed to sow doubt.

“Since I brought her to Starkiller, actually,” Ben responded. “What? She never mentioned our little chats?”

“You mean since you kidnapped her,” Poe retorted.

“Not according to your own jury,” Kylo pointed out. “I was acquitted of those charges.”

“But you are guilty of torture. Shouldn’t we be taking him to prison or something?” Poe asked.

“Everyone quiet!” Leia ordered. They all shut up. “We need to get a different ship, and we need to find Rey,” she said calmly now that she had their attention. “Can you find her?” she asked Ben.

“When she wakes up, yes,” he said. 

She wasn’t sure he was being entirely upfront with her, but he wasn’t outright lying either. For the moment, he was still their best chance at finding Rey.

“Good,” Leia said. “Well, Commander. Let’s get off this moon.”


	6. Comfort Food

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leia begins to realize how differently Ben understood his childhood from how she did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably a terrible time to post a chapter, but I have half an hour before I go to the theatre to see TROS, and I'm too afraid to go to other places on the internet because the night is dark and full of spoilers.

Leia had an odd sense of deja vu when she realized Ben was missing. He was close, she knew that, but unlike when he was a child and wandered off, it worried her. Back then, she could always feel him, she always knew he was fine. But it wasn’t him she was concerned about now, it was everyone else.

After Endor, they had traveled to a less than reputable space station she knew about. There they had traded the First Order shuttle for a less recognizable vessel.

After much arguing, they had turned towards the main Resistance base. The others weren’t fond of the idea of bringing Kylo Ren there, at least if he wasn’t a prisoner, but they also had to admit that he wasn’t exactly in good standing with the First Order anymore.

They all wanted to find Rey. His claim he could use their bond to do so once she was awake, wasn’t much, but it was more than they had.

Of course, once they’d gotten to the base, a new set of arguments had started, this time with the Resistance leaders who’d been managing things during the trial.

It wasn’t until a solider interrupted them that she realized he was gone. “Uh, I think Kylo Ren is trying to poison us.”

“What do you mean? Do we need to go into quarantine procedures?” Connix asked.

“Well…He’s in the kitchen doing something…”

Leia sighed. “Like cooking?” she asked. 

Without waiting for an answer, she strode past the solider and began heading towards the mess hall.

Leia couldn’t help but wonder if this was some odd plea for her attention. Ben had learned to cook at a young age from their servant Bidi. The old man and his wife Nalla had been on a vacation they’d saved their whole lives for when Alderaan was destroyed. Not only had they lost their home, their children, and their grandchildren, but they had also lost their life savings. Nalla had been a peace officer, and Bidi, a teacher; all their money had been in pension funds in Alderian banks, and the records of their lifetime of service had evaporated with the planet.

They were proud people, and although Leia would have happily supported them--House Organa had many off-world holdings that survived the Disaster--they insisted on working. So she took them in as household servants.

Bidi had loved to cook, and had taught Ben. 

It started, she supposed, one year when she'd been so busy she forgot her own birthday. A bill she’d been working on for months was in danger of being rejected if they didn’t add some last-minute amendments. She’d called to let Bidi know she wouldn’t be home for dinner.

“Your Highness… I know you’re work is important, but...” Bidi added the next part in a hushed tone. “Well Ben helped make a special meal for you, I think it would crush him if you missed it.”

Leia imagined Ben’s big sad eyes, and she’d crumbled. Instead of staying late, she went home to celebrate her birthday with her son.

The bill didn’t pass.

However, Ben seemed to learn that he could often get more of his mother’s attention by putting time and effort into making her a meal. She always knew she had been too busy at work when he started preparing more meals for her. She always vowed to make more time for Ben, until finally, she ran out of chances.

As Leia headed for the mess hall, Poe followed her, and these days Finn seemed to follow Poe. Leia hopped that was because the two of them had stopped dancing around each other and accepted their feelings for each other. There was never enough time, after all. Even if you had forty years, it was never enough time.

“Hey, stop that,” Poe said to her son as soon as they entered the mess. 

Ben was standing over the large stove in the kitchen at the back of the room, stirring a large pot.

“Why?” Ben asked without looking up. “It doesn’t seem as if you use this kitchen.”

“Yeah,” Poe retorted. “Well, someone blew up the shuttle that had our mess staff and droids before they could make it to Crait.”

Ben was right, the kitchen itself was mostly untouched. Since Crait, the Resistance had been surviving off of precooked rations. Rations that were meant for emergency situations. 

They had other food. Great sheets of processed nutrients. They were another kind of military ration, tasteless on their own, but easy to ship, and as long as they stayed packaged, they could survive decades. It was an easy way to stock a cafeteria; to feed large numbers of people like an army or a Jedi temple.

Those rations didn’t have to be entirely unappealing. Although they would never compare to fresh ingredients, there were specific spices designed to flavor them in a large variety of ways. A good mess cook could work miracles and disguise the overly processed loaves as any number of other foods. But it was a specialized skill that currently no one in the Resistance had. Cooks didn’t think of themselves as having skills that freedom fighters needed. How wrong they were.

Poe halted in his advance halfway through the mess hall, stopped by the alluring smell that wafted from the kitchen.

“Is that carnaw?” Leia asked, transported back by the smell.

“Of course not,” Ben chided her. “Carnaw can’t be made without tala, and there isn’t any tala left in the galaxy.”

His words brought Leia a torrent of mixed emotions. Moments like this, the loss of Alderaan was like a knife to her heart. Yet she was proud of her son, who knew how to make proper carnaw, even if he’d never had it himself. She also missed old Bidi, who had been the one to pass the culinary traditions of Alderaan on to Ben, and Leia only wished she had done a better job of passing her culture on to him.

Evidently, she had let her emotions slip because he regarded her curiously. She wondered what Ben made of her mix of pain and bittersweet joy.

“Well, it smells like, carnaw,” Leia insisted.

She strode up to the pot that he was stirring, and without asking permission, took the spoon from him, and tasted the stew. 

The truth was, she wasn’t an expert on the subject. The stew was a folk recipe, not one commonly served at the Aldera Royal Palace. But for people like Bidi and Nalla, it had been comfort food.

It was heavenly. Leia couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten more than a ration pack.

“A little too sweet, maybe,” she said.

Ben had always been one to strive for perfection; her instincts told her that he didn’t want to be praised by his mother in front of the Resistance.

Or was she completely wrong? Was she quietly crushing her son’s spirit? Was he desperate for praise?

Before doubt overcame her and she could retract her statement, Poe spoke up. “What are you some kind of Force-chief now?”

But she could see the interested way both he and Finn were eyeing the pot.

“I know you weren’t cooking for the First Order,” Finn added.

“He ran the kitchens at the Jedi Temple,” Leia explained.

Luke had always envisioned his students as self-sufficient, the Temple would be maintained by Jedi and not by droids. However, his first several attempts at a garden to provide food for the Temple had failed. So in the early years, he had used similar rations to feed his students. Luke had brought in a few cooking droids until the Padawans were able to run the kitchen on their own.

So Ben was more than familiar with this style of cooking, as well as more traditional kinds.

“Okay, but why is he cooking?” Poe insisted. “You ate all the rations on the way here.”

“You try throwing ships around with the power of your mind, and see how hungry you are,” Ben snapped. “There, you’ve uncovered my weakness. I get hungry. I also prefer to eat real food rather than the terrible fair you serve your prisoners.”

Whatever Poe was about to say, Leia was sure it would only escalate the situation.

“Okay, out,” she told Poe and Finn.

She had meant to use her best General voice; it had come out with a little too much mom voice.

It was still effective, and the two Resistance fighters hurried from the room.

Only once they were gone, Leia realized she had no idea what to say to her son. He had returned his attention to the stew.

“Bidi would be proud,” she said. 

He only snorted in disdain.

“What?” she asked.

“Don’t pretend like you cared for Bidi and Nalla. The moment they became politically inconvenient, you got rid of them.”

“What?!” she said absolutely floored by the accusation.

“Please, you think I didn’t know. You were supposed to be the Senator of the people, which is why it was so scandalous that you had organic servants rather than droids. So you got rid of them, threw them out. I suppose they might as well have been droids. Although come to think of it, you’ve kept Threepio all these years, Force knows why.”

She was surprised by his anger, yet felt like she shouldn’t have been. Bidi and Nalla had been the closest thing to grandparents he’d had. 

She’d also had no idea that her son had any awareness of ridiculous political scandal, and it was clear he didn’t know what had really happened. For a moment, she wondered if she should tell him the truth, or if it would hurt him less to go on thinking she was the villain. Except keeping things from him had not benefited her in the past, and he was hardly a little boy anymore.

“Bidi loved you, you know,” she started slowly, trying to decide how to explain to her grown son all the intricacies he’s missed as a child. “But Nalla…I think she felt it was a bit of betrayal of their own children and grandchildren. They lost so much…And then the Disaster Settlement happened…”

He glanced up for just a moment, and she knew he was listening.

“We never really talked much about it,” she admitted. “How much do you know?”

He shrugged. “What’s to know? The Senate spent years arguing over whether the survivors of Alderaan deserved any kind of reparations for their loss. Even that was something they couldn’t agree on. Finally, they gave people some money.”

“Some money?” Leia laughed at the oversimplification. “And where do you think the money came from?”

He looked at her mystified. “The government, so taxes, I presume.”

“No,” Leia said. “The arguments over the settlement weren’t about whether the survivors should get money, but where it should come from. Alderaan was a wealthy world. Although people like Bidi and Nalla had all their money in local banks, there were many wealthy families and businesses. And who did the wealthy bank with? The Imperial Banks that the Emperor had seized from the old Banking Clan.

“At the same time that the survivors of Alderaan were trying to claim their assets, the Muun were trying to rebuild the Banking Clan. After thirty years of a government-run banking system, it was hard to determine what rightfully belonged to the Muun before the Empire.

“It took years to untangle what the new Banking Clan did and didn’t own, what had been assets of victims of the Disaster, and who those assets belong to.

“The final settlement took all the assets of Alderaanian who had no surviving heirs and divided it up among the survivors. And it wasn’t just a little money. A lot of prosperous families were completely wiped out that day. Suddenly Bidi and Nalla had more money then that two of them had earned together over their lifetime.

“Once Bidi and Nalla had that money, and we’re no longer reliant on us…He really did love you, but he loved his wife more.”

She waited for a moment. Ben tested the stew once more but said nothing.

“Okay, I’ve been honest with you,” she prompted. “Now, are you going to tell me what it is you’re hiding?”

He looked at her both guilty and startled that she’d caught him.

“What?” she asked. “I spent most of my life in the Senate. You think I don’t know when someone’s lying to me?”

“If Rey didn’t tell you, I’m not sure I should,” he was hedging. 

“First off, I know about the two of you. Secondly, if this secret, whatever it is, is putting her in danger, or will help us finder her, then you need…” Leia hesitated. “You need to trust me.”

She was terrified he would turn away from her. That she was asking too much too soon. But she didn’t know what else to do.

“Rey…” he struggled to find the words. “Rey is pregnant.”

“Are you sure?” Leia asked, but it felt like the ground had vanished from under her feet.

She was suddenly running through every interaction with Rey since she and Ben had been rescued from Garnik V. She thought of Rey getting sick at the end of the trial, Rey crying in Leia’s arms, Rey, who had been clearly holding something back.

“I could sense it, couldn’t you?” he taunted his mother. 

If his teenage years had taught her anything, it was best not to answer him when he was being a smart ass.

“Our chil—daughter,” he corrected himself as if he’d suddenly decided on that. “She’s strong with the Force.”

“You can’t know it’s a girl yet,” Leia couldn’t help but argue.

She remembered Han also being sure they were going to have a daughter when they’d first discovered she was pregnant. She was willing to accept that her son could use the Force to sense the presence of a new life within Rey, but not that he could figure out its gender.

“And that’s why Palpatine wants her,” he said, ignoring her interjection.

“To raise a new Vader,” Leia said, her heart-stopping for just a moment. No, she couldn’t go through this again. Leia had lost her son to Snoke. She could not lose another child to the Dark Side.

“No, mother,” he said pityingly. “As a vessel, a host for his spirit, so he can live again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The [Banking Clan](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/InterGalactic_Banking_Clan)
> 
> See you on the other side of TROS. And I guess it's good I updated, I always meant to get the plot point of that last line out before we find out what Palpatine is up to elsewhere.


	7. Choosing a Path

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo begins to train a new apprentice while he searches for Rey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So when I posted on Monday, I thought, hey I haven't promoted [my Tumblr](https://clock-work-crow.tumblr.com) in a while. But then I was too scared to go anywhere near Tumblr. Also, I don't use it much, except I've now posted an essay on some of my TROS thoughts there.
> 
> That being said please if you have any spoilery thoughts on anything, go there, I don't' want the comments here to spoil anyone.
> 
> Also, I'm now at a point in this story that has me nervous. Back in the first part, some people commented on how they really wanted Rey and Kylo to talk, and in the back of my mind, I knew how the trial was going to end and that she'd be kidnapped because I've had this all plotted out for a long time.
> 
> That being said, I promise that there will be no chasing of meaningly McGuffins to find her. The next few chapters are all about the Solo family dynamics and how those have been influenced by the Jedi and the Force. So I hope you'll stick with me, and I promise we will see Rey and Kylo back in the same room.

Kylo dreamed. 

He dreamed of his daughter. She had Rey's features, but his thick black hair wrapped in intricate braids like a crown around her head.

In some dreams, she was proud and strong. She descended on him from the crest of a dark hill. In her hand was a red lightsaber.

She leapt at him, forcing him back. He parried every blow, but he knew he could not win. Even if he had wanted to, she was too strong. This was the way of things. His time was over, and it was her turn to take power.

Inevitably the plasma cut painful into his side. 

He fell to his knees and dropped his weapon, watching as she came in for the killing blow.

"I'm proud of you," he told her in his final seconds. 

She did not weep.

In other dreams, she was not proud but peaceful and sad. She approached him slowly, "I'm sorry father," she told him. "I can't let this continue."

The green glow of her lightsaber illuminated the wildflowers beneath her feet. 

He could stand against her blows, but not against the look of sorrow and disappointment in her eyes. 

He knew that she could not bear to strike him down, so instead of dodging, he let her thrust hit him square in the chest. His heart blossomed with fire.

"Father! Forgive me," she cried as she extinguished the blade.

He cupped her cheek. "Always," he told her.

Those were the good dreams. The dreams that brought Kylo comfort. Because whoever his daughter was, she had chosen her own path and followed it to its end.

But there was a third dream.

A dream where he couldn't tell what color eyes she had because they glowed with Sith corruption. Her hair hung limply down her shoulders and stuck to her plaid cheeks. 

She was rotting from the inside out, and her laugh was that of an old man.

This was not his daughter; she had been cored out of her own flesh to allow a decaying spirit to set up residence.

Over and over red blade met red blade. Kylo refused to lose, but he did not have the strength to win.

Eventually, she disarmed him. She would not kill him. It amused the thing that had devoured her to repeat this deadly dance. To make him watch as that thing that should have been his child ruled over a dying galaxy.

Once those dreams had him, there was only one escape; the alarm he'd been forced to set, to make sure that he woke each morning. It's harsh screech forced him back into the real world.

No matter how tired he was, he was never tempted to go back to sleep.

Even if he had been, he knew his apprentice would be up already, waiting impatiently for her training.

Both Snoke and Skywalker had been demanding masters, each in their own way. But neither of them could hold a candle to his apprentice.

Unsurprisingly she was already in the training room, running through her drills.

Kylo refused to be rushed by her, and still took his time to warm up. After all, she'd say something about it if he didn't.

He locked the doors to the training room so that no one from the outside could bother them.

"Ready then?" he said as he moved to the center of the room, lightsaber in hand.

"Ready," his mother said, as her face was lit by blue plasma.

He ignited his lightsaber, and they flew at each other.

At first glance, they must have looked ridiculous. Kylo towered over his mother, and he imagined that he must look like the worse kind of bully fighting an old woman. But anyone who thought that Leia Organa was frail was in for a nasty surprise.

It was true that when they had started their training nearly two months ago, she had not been quite as nimble. It had taken a little time for the rust to wear off of her. But once it had, she quickly became a deadly fighter.

After all, neither youth nor size determined a Jedi's strength.

Of course, he had tried to make it clear to her that he had no interest in training her to be a Jedi.

"I can only train you in the Dark Side," he told her when she first asked. That wasn't true, but he'd been sure that would dissuade his mother from this ludicrous idea.

She only smiled sadly at him. "Why do you think I stopped training with Luke all those years ago? It wasn't just so I could be with your father. There was always too much pain and anger in me. It's my temper you have after all."

He hadn't believed her. He agreed to train her only because he'd figured all it would take was one or two lessons in the Dark Side, and she would change her mind; it had seemed simpler than arguing. 

He had been wrong.

The pain and anger that inhabited his mother were not willing to back down.

"I will not be Sheev Palpatine's grandmother," she had insisted when he questioned her motivations.

Oh, yes, and there was that also, the hatred. A burning hatred Kylo would never have believed his mother capable of. Or maybe it was that he couldn't understand how she could hate the former Emperor so much and yet be able to forgive him.

It didn't matter. "I was plan B," she told him. "If Luke failed. I was the one who was supposed to stop the Emperor. Well, we didn't realize it until now, but Luke failed."

And so every morning Kylo Ren trained his mother in the ways of the Force.

At times he found himself reflecting on what different pupils Rey and his mother were. He had wanted to train Rey in the Dark Side, to bring her over to his way of thinking, but that had failed. It hadn't been until he had given up on that approach and agreed to train her in the Jedi way that they had made the progress they needed to escape Garnik V.

Despite the darkness that swirled within Rey, there was only one real path for her.

As his mother's training advanced further and further, he began to wonder if she really had given up her training because she was too close to the Dark Side? She reached for it easily, with little prompting from him. It should have felt like a victory, corrupting her like this, a vindication of the choices he had made. 

Yet it made him uneasy. He felt sure they would be able to defeat Palpatine and the Knights of Ren, but what then? Now that his mother had embraced power, would she ever let it go? Would it be so terrible if she didn't?

The uncomfortable truth was that in many ways, his politics and his mother's were the same. They believed in the same policies, the same things that needed to be changed to make the Galaxy a better place; they just disagreed on how to accomplish them. She still clung to her ideals of democracy, and he knew that the Galaxy needed a strong leader to bring about those changes.

So if his mother refused to give up her power, would an Empress Organa really be so bad? 

Of course, first, they had to find the Knights and Palpatine, and that had proved difficult.

"That's enough," his mother said as one of their bouts ended.

He had won again; she wasn't yet a match for him with a lightsaber, although her raw strength with the Force was impressive.

"I decide when it's enough," he argued.

"Are you forgetting? You have a mission in less than an hour," she reminded him. "You should get something to eat and save up some strength…Master."

This was the worst part of training his mother. Although she would listen to his instructions, she wouldn't follow his orders. The worst mistake he had ever made in his life was telling her that if he were going to train her, she would have to call him Master.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

But every time she said it, he just wanted to curl up into a ball and die.

Especially since she used it most when she was…well mothering him.

The only saving grace was that they both agreed that it was best that the other Resistance members not know too much about his mother's training. They had to suspect something, he supposed, but they didn't pry too much.

Just like they didn't tell the other Resistance members what they suspected about Palpatine's plans. They were skeptical enough about the idea of a ghost; there was no point in trying to convince them that the ghost was trying to resurrect itself using his unborn child as a vessel.

He hated it, but she was right. There was a mission. Not that Kylo was worried about wearing himself out, but he should eat.

He nodded, and just like that; they went their separate ways.

As he ate, he couldn't help wonder what he was still doing there among the Resistance. Kylo knew his mother's answer, she would tell him he needed help if he was going to find Rey, and yet so far, the Resistance had been useless, and he seemed to be doing most of the work.

This day's mission was a perfect example. Kylo had given them the intelligence on the First Order listening outpost they were going to attack. He no longer knew anything about the disposition of First Order ships, but there was still a great deal of infrastructure to the First Order war machine that was in place from when he had been Supreme Leader. 

Ships could be redeployed, but military bases were much harder to move.

The hope was that this outpost might have some information about the location of the Knights of Ren. If he could find just one of his Knights, he was sure he could find Rey.

He tried to contact Rey regularly, using their bond, but to no avail. At first, he believed it was because she was being kept unconscious through some artificial means. Eventually, he had tried to wake her, thinking that maybe he could lend her the strength through the bond; that he could wake her up.

That's when he'd noticed it — a dark slick barrier between them. Someone was trying to keep them apart. Kylo didn't need to wonder who had the power to block their bond, and the ability to do so at all hours of day or night. After all, the dead don't sleep.

He was more convinced than ever that Kassa Ren had taken Rey to Palpatine, he just didn't know where to find any of them.

Maybe this would be the one, he told himself. The base that would have some record of where the Knights were. 

And if it didn't have what they were looking for? Well, the time had come, he realized. He had waisted too much time doing things the Resistance's way. 

Especially since he was helping them dismantle the First Order. Kylo Ren still believed in the First Order and hated attacking it. The First Order was the best chance he had to make the Galaxy that his daughter deserved. But he had to find and save her first.

Besides, Hux had to be dealt with. It was clear that the General, who now styled himself Supreme Leader, would never simply let Kylo take back power. And if Hux learned that Kylo had a child? Well, no one in the Galaxy was better positioned to hide that child to use as a bargaining chip than Hux, who oversaw the stormtrooper program.

The fact that he was eroding Hux's power was the only thing that made these attacks on the First Order bearable for Kylo. So if they were not successful this time in finding some clue to Rey's location, Kylo would leave.

He just needed to find a way to explain that to his mother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to say, I'd really love to know what people thought of this chapter. It feels like a big risk, but also there are reasons for the path Leia is on.


	8. A Dangerous Path

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leia receives disturbing news from the Senate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N So one quick thing, I made a minor change to the last chapter. Just implying more time had passed. Despite being somewhat specific about time in the flashbacks in the first part, I've been vague about how long the trial took (it took some time to set up before it even started, and then they moved it, so the non-flashbacks in the first part took a couple of months) and a couple of months have passed since Rey was taken. For reference, she is closing in on six months pregnant.

Leia turned off the holoprojector and considered what she had just learned. Her Senate contacts should have warned her, she thought as she turned the bounty puck over in her hands. She should haven't had to learn about this on her own.

A wave of dark thoughts washed through her. She knew better than to push back against them. Fighting against her dark impulses only strengthened them. She had to accept them, only then could she move past them.

Leia wasn't a fool. She knew how dangerous a game she was playing. She could feel herself changing—or perhaps she was finally accepting who she had always been— a sinister voice inside herself whispered.

After all, she had been born to power. As a child, she believed she'd been lucky to be a princess. A random war orphan adopted into royalty. But power was her heritage. Leia was the daughter of a Queen who became one of the most influential Senators of her generation. Leia was also the daughter of one of the most powerful Jedi to have ever lived.

And didn't she deserve it? She had spent her whole childhood studying government so that she could be a worthy leader of her people. The adopted Princess had taken her duties so seriously that she had been first elected to the Senate at fourteen. 

When it became clear that under the Empire, politics couldn't save them, she had become a rebel. She knew how to fight and win wars. 

If only she had been able to keep her secret a little longer, she would have been First Senator. She could have kept the New Republic safe from the First Order, if only they had trusted her.

Luckily the Resistance was not making the same mistake. It had not been easy; once it had been revealed that Kylo Ren was her son, she had to work to regain her position as the head of the movement she had started. Once again, she was the Resistance's clear leader.

She was still grooming Poe to follow her, but the young Commander still had a long way to go before he would be ready to lead the Resistance on his own. By that time, perhaps they wouldn't need a Resistance anymore?

Despite the many voices, Poe's included, that didn't like having the former Supreme Leader around, Leia had been able to leverage her son's presence into a powerful tool for the Resistance.

It wasn't just his battle prowess or the information he had given them on the First Order. She had used his time with the Resistance, and the victories he had given them, to win some unlikely allies. 

Leia knew the political layout of the New Republic like the back of her hand. She knew which worlds were only interested in backing winners. Which politicians wanted to make sure they were in with the eventual victors. With Starkiller Base destroyed, and Kylo Ren bringing the Resistance victory after victory, she'd been able to get ships and supplies from worlds that never would have backed a purely idealistic Resistance.

Other worlds she had frightened into cooperating. Leia Organa would never stoop to making threats. Luckily she didn't have to. Her son's temper was becoming legendary, and if others believed that she was the only one who could control and funnel that anger, well…It was in the best interests of everyone if they cooperated with the Resistance.

She had even, on one occasion, brought Ben into a negotiation. Under the right circumstances letting him be himself worked as a great negotiating tactic.

Of course, there were still idealists, those who considered her son a monster and didn't want anything to do with him. But Leia had become very good at playing the sorrowful mother. To these leaders, she presented herself as a woman desperate to save both her son and the Galaxy, determined to heal the wounds of war. She wouldn't make excuses for him, but she begged these Senator's to give him a chance. To let her son prove that he was changing. That he could return to the path of the Jedi and stand as the Galaxy's protector from the First Order.

Of course, she made sure that these Senators never met or spoke with Ben.

She told no one about the true threat the Galaxy was facing. If she had tried to convince them that she needed their support because there was a chance that Emperor Palpatine would return from the dead, they would have thought she had lost her mind.

They certainly didn't need to know that she was possibly losing her soul.

Leia Organa knew the risks of what she was doing. She was after all a Skywalker, and she knew better than most what a dangerous path it was she was walking. If she were still the idealistic girl trying to save the Galaxy, she would never have let her son teach her to use the Dark Side. The risks were too great. She might destroy Palpatine only to become him.

So it was a good thing she wasn't trying to save the Galaxy. She was trying to save her son, and she was willing to risk everything to do that.

Privately, she thought that he and Rey having a child was a terrible mistake. But Ben was obsessed with the child and Rey. No good would come of them becoming Palpatine's latest victims. So Leia knew she had to do everything in her power to help save her grandchild. The Force alone knew what would happen to Ben if he lost his child to the Emperor, and she was determined to make sure that didn't happen.

She would destroy Palpatine once and for all, no matter the cost. 

And if the only way Ben was willing to train her, was in the Dark Side, well…the Jedi would no doubt tell her this was the worse way possible to save her son, but then the Jedi were dead. All their wisdom hadn't been able to save them from her father, so maybe they weren't the best people to tell her how to save her son.

She turned the puck over in her hand. If only the Galaxy didn't seem to be intent on stopping her.

"General, Black squadron is reporting back from the mission," Connix commed her.

"I'll be right there," Leia acknowledged.

Quietly she prayed that this mission had been a success, that they would finally find some trace of Rey.

She watched as the battle reports came in.

From a tactical standpoint, the mission had been a success.

The Resistance had quickly learned that trying to integrate Kylo Ren into any sort of team was a mistake. Luckily he neither wanted nor needed much in the way of backup. 

In this case, Black squadron had escorted in a small drop ship, with her son the only soldier on board. While the X-wings had focused on the primary weapon systems of the small base, he had infiltrated from the ground, cutting through their troops.

It was another victory for the Resistance and another demoralizing blow for the First Order. As she began to look through the battle reports, it looked like once again, some of the stormtroopers had thrown down their weapons. They choose surrender instead of fighting against Kylo Ren.

This time at least he hadn't slaughtered them all. That meant Leia had successfully managed to cover up the last incident. Defectors were potentially risky but ultimately good for their side. She couldn't let it get back to the First Order that they wouldn't accept a surrender.

More than anything, her son's unwillingness to play the political game made her want to slap him. She sometimes thought that he wanted everyone in the Galaxy to hate him. It seemed like he went out of his way to avoid doing anything that might make anyone like him.

For instance, he could have easily won over a few members of the Resistance if he would just do something he loved to do; cook. It would have shown that he was willing to help out and would have humanized him. But no, after his first day on the base, when people had grudgingly praised his stew, he had decided not to cook again.

He seemed to think it demeaned him.

Or maybe he wanted everyone else to hate him, as much as he hated himself. It was that thought that frightened Leia, that kept her up at night.

The more time she spent with her son, the more she worried the death of his father was something Ben would never recover from, not because it had corrupted him, but because he couldn't forgive himself for it. Han's death might be the poison that destroyed her son's soul, and she knew nothing would have bothered Han more.

He might not have always been around, but Han had loved his son more than anything.

And Leia's forgiveness only seemed to hurt Ben more.

Which was why they needed to find Rey. He refused to talk about his relationship with young Jedi, but Leia was sure that if there was anyone who could bring any comfort to her son, it was Rey.

So she sifted through the data from the mission, hoping for any sign of where Rey might be. By the time the squadron had returned, she'd hadn't found anything.

All she could do was hurry to the launchpad to great them as they landed.

"We need to talk," Leia told her soon as soon as he disembarked.

"Yes, we do," he agreed.

Something was on his mind as well. 

She took him to her office and sat behind her desk, motioning for him to take a seat.

He shook his head, so she ignored the fact he was standing.

"I've been in contact with the authorities on Coruscant," she started cautiously. "I suppose you know…well, Coruscant was never happy losing its place as the Galactic capital. They didn't like the idea of having to wait their turn to host the Senate, despite the fact that it saved them from the First Order…"

"And?" he clearly wasn't interested in the underlying politics of the situation.

For the hundredth time, she wondered why he had taken the mantle of Supreme Leader since this all seemed to tire him so much.

"And they are trying to make some power plays," she continued. "Prove their importance. Once Starkiller was destroyed, they were the first to offer to host the Senate after the Hosnian Cataclysm..."

She tried to think what say next; what wouldn't trigger his temper? She couldn't think of anything, so instead, she activated the puck.

The holographic image of her son's face appeared along with other details of the bounty.

"So?" he shrugged. "Hux put a bounty on…" then the saw the details of the bounty. This one wasn't issued by the First Order; it was issued by the authorities on Coruscant.

"It seems they held a sentencing hearing without you," Leia explained. "You've been given two ten year sentences for torturing Poe and Rey, respectively. Oh, and another year or so for missing the hearing, contempt of court, failing to respond to the subpoena, and something else I can't remember now."

"The First Order is paying more," he said unimpressed.

"Of course," Leia sighed. "Coruscant doesn't actually want to deal with you, they just want it to look like they are trying to bring you to justice. I'm sure they are counting on the fact that if a bounty hunter did manage to apprehend you, they would go for the bigger payout."

Leia couldn't hide the anger in her voice. It wasn't just that this was the worst sort of empty political gesture, it was that it had been hidden from her.

When she'd found out about the bounty and begun looking into it, she'd protested that he'd never been given a chance to show up to the hearing. The excuse they'd given, was that the last recorded address for Ben Solo had been their old house on Chandrila.

Supposedly they'd sent droids there on several occasions to inform him. Of course, they knew he wasn't there. It was true that the location of the Resistance base was secret. But Leia had been in contact with both the Governor and Senators from Coruscant about several other matters related to the Resistance. If they had actually wanted to contact Ben, they could have.

He could clearly feel her anger.

"Well, then, I guess we should give them what they want." He smiled. "I guess I should turn myself in."

That was the last thing she expected him to say. Although she had to admit, she felt like the government of Coruscant deserved to be forced to deal with him.

She regarded him for a minute before deciding she knew his real motive.

"Really? You're going to let yourself be arrested rather than just admit you want to leave?" she accused him.

He started to protest, before realizing he had been caught. "Fine, yes. I want to leave. I’m _going_ to leave. This is useless. At this point, I'm far more likely to find the Emperor in a jail in Coruscant than—"

The look of embarrassed shock on his face told her he just come to the same realization she had.

"Coruscant," Leia said. "The seat of Galactic power for thousands of years. Where else would Palpatine choose to be reborn?"


	9. Inheritance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo surrenders to the authorities on Coruscant and runs into some of his father's old business associates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: The second part of this chapter has real-world swearing. I just didn't think that the typical Star Wars swear words carried the right emotional impact, and in one case, couldn't find a Star Wars equivalent. 
> 
> And on that note, I should say this story has a lot of angst about to happen. But if you look I’ve updated the tags because I promise, everything Kylo and Rey are going through will be worth it in the end and will get them to a happy place.

Kylo fought the temptation to knock the press droids out of the air. He distracted himself instead wondering if, despite her protests, his mother had been the one to alert the media that he was surrendering to the authorities.

His first impulse on realizing that the Emperor was almost certainly on Coruscant had been to rush to the planet to find Rey. But his mother had reminded him, Galactic City was big, and Palpatine had spent decades there consolidating his power. There were a thousand places that they could be hiding and hundreds of starports from which the Emperor and the Knights of Ren could escape the planet if they believed they were being hunted. 

Turning himself in, provided the perfect reason for them to be on Coruscant. Not that Kylo liked it. He hadn't been seriously considering it when he'd suggested it the first time. He'd simply imagined it as a way to get away from the Resistance so he could continue the search for Rey on his own.

Yet here he was.

The agreement they'd come to was that he would give his mother three days; three days for her to use her contacts to try and find Rey, while she also tried to get his sentence overturned.

After that, he would leave prison one way or another, and look for Rey on his own.

Of course, he meant to keep looking for Rey while he was imprisoned. If they were on the same planet, he was hoping that he'd be finally able to break through the barrier on their bond.

In the meantime, they'd agreed he would surrender himself. He didn't want the Resistance collecting the bounty on him and using the funds to further their attacks against the First Order. Also, his mother had argued that it was best for his child if he wasn't a fugitive. They would better be able to make the case that he would have shown up for the sentencing hearings if he willingly surrendered now.

More and more, however, he was becoming convinced this was a brilliant piece of political theatre on his mother's part, designed to enhance her own image throughout the Galaxy.

As soon as he had stepped out of the shuttle, a dozen blasters were trained on him, and someone was shouting for him to get down on the ground and put his hands on his head.

Instantly, his mother was standing in front of him, as if her tiny frame could somehow shield him. At the same time, his attorney was shouting that this was a peaceful surrender, and all this was unnecessary.

Kylo had noticed, with a bit of amusement, that Hennis kept quite a distance from Kylo as they did so.

When the attack on his trial had been broadcast, the Resistance had sent a rescue effort and had dug out a handful of survivors from the rubble.

Kylo hadn't cared enough to find out the details of how the attorney had survived. Evidently, having been seriously injured, Hennis had become a little jumpier since the incident. Even so, they had agreed to continue with the case.

Kylo was not going to get down on the ground. He was also not going to hide behind his mother. Instead, he stepped out from behind her into the circle of nervous officers his hands extended in front of him so they could put binders on him.

He half hoped they would fire on him, that would at least be interesting.

But the situation didn't escalate. One of the officers stepped forward to cuff him, and they began to lead him towards the prison, all while his mother protested that this should have been private.

One of the press droids managed to fly in close to him. A synthesized voice asked, "Kylo Ren, are you really surrendering to the New Republic?"

It was such a stupid question, considering what was happening. Then again, maybe it wasn't, because he wasn't really surrendering, was he? Not that he could say that he had planned a jailbreak in three days' time.

Well, if his mother wanted him to be more political, perhaps it was time he started.

"It's Master Ben Solo," he corrected the droid, although the words nearly killed him to say. "The Jedi have always endured with patience. Even when Order 66 was given…"

He didn't bother to continue. The droid had been shooed away by the officers, and it was likely it could no longer hear him.

He wished he could read his mother's expression. She wanted him to be more political? Well, this was him being political. Hennis was still convinced he could push the Jedi angle as a way to free Ben Solo, especially since the charges of torture against him directly involved the use of the Force. 

Besides, he hadn't said he was going to be patient, just that the Jedi were known for patience. Reminding people that destroying the Jedi had led to the Empire…well, all of that helped him.

Now that he'd said the words, he took a certain perverse pleasure in using his title as a Jedi once again. Identifying with the Jedi, dragging their name through the mud, it was the only revenge he might ever have on his Uncle.

As the doors to the prison closed behind him, and he began to be processed, he found another reason to identify with the Jedi. He normally didn't use the Jedi mind trick, he despised it. Subverting the will of another had never sat well with him. The Jedi would have protested that it was a way to avoid violent conflict. Kylo believed that threats and violent conflict were at least honest.

However, violence was unlikely to benefit him here. When he was lead into a room with a guard so he could be strip-searched, he decided to use the mind trick rather than succumb to that humiliation.

"You have already searched me," he intoned. "You found nothing."

The guard obediently repeated, and Kylo was spared the indignity.

The rest of his processing passed without incident. Before long, he had a cell assigned and was shown where the cafeteria was so that he could join the other prisoners for lunch.

He found an empty table and began to eat while trying to decide if the food was better or worse than what the Resistance usually severed.

A few times, he noticed one of the prisoners start to approach him. They were always intimidating-looking men of various species. But each time Kylo stared them dead in the eyes while he reached out to the Force, using the Dark Side to make himself seem even larger and more intimidating. Each time it worked, and the prisoner who had clearly intended to challenge him in some way turned aside and left.

He was grateful. Not because he was worried they could harm him, but because he didn't want to be part of some tired prison cliché. He had no intention of being here long enough to need fear or respect from the other prisoners.

Then a half a dozen men, all cybernetically enhanced approached him. Their faces were half-covered with augmentations. Kylo suspected that outside the prison, they wore some sort of helmet or face mask that linked into the augmentations, but those had been taken from them here, leaving there faces a mess of scars and circuitry.

They didn't seem intimidated by him.

One of them spoke up. "Your name Solo?" 

Surprised, he simply answered, "Yes."

It was the last thing he had expected. Kylo had anticipated that people would know who he was, but know him as Kylo Ren, Supreme Leader of the First Order. Any challenge or interest from anyone here would be related to his time among the First Order; he had not expected to be asked about his birth name.

"You're Han Solo's son?" the man clarified.

"I'm sorry, who are you?" he asked. His father's name made his stomach turn. What did his father have to do with these people?

The man smirked, clearly thinking they deserved to be recognized. "We are the Guavian Death Gang, now are you Han Solo's son?"

Death Gang was a hard name not to laugh at, and he might have if the mention of his father wasn't still so uncomfortable. Lying might have been the smart thing to do, but somehow he found he couldn't do that.

"Yes, I am," he answered this time.

"Then you owe us sixty thousand credits," the man said.

"I'm sorry, what?" Somehow he was having a hard time catching up to this conversation.

"Your father borrowed fifty thousand credits from us. He died. Now you owe us sixty thousand. Interest you know? So let's talk about how you are going to pay us back."

The others moved in closer to Kylo, clearly intending to menace him.

The absurdity wrung a painful laugh from him, although, under the surface, his temper was beginning to boil. 

"I murdered my father.” There was no amusement in his voice. "I didn't do it so I could pay his debts."

That didn't seem to dissuade them. 

"A bit of advice," the man said. "Never admit to being guilty. Also, since it looks like you made it harder to collect, it's now sixty-five thousand."

That's when something snapped inside him. No single action had defined him more than the moment he ignited his lightsaber in his father's chest. It wasn't the response to a night-time ambush, to a sudden betrayal; it was planned, and Kylo had had every opportunity to stop, to go back; he hadn't. 

Listening to a stranger assign a monetary value to the act, to reduce it to something transactional, not something profound was more than he could bear. Especially since killing his father hadn’t ended up being profound at all. The most defining moment of his life, and it had been a mistake.

Kylo started to rise, and one of the gang who had circled around behind him put a hand on his shoulder, to force him back into his seat. When Kylo resisted, the man grabbed Kylo’s arm and twisted it behind his back and tried to slam Kylo's head down against the table. 

After that, Kylo only saw red.

* * *

Anger and fear coursed through Leia's veins. Anger because her son couldn't even make it through one day in prison without nearly starting a riot. Fear because she could tell that something was badly wrong with him.

Training together had revived and possibly even strengthened the bond they had shared when he was a boy. From what little Ben was willing to say, Leia knew it wasn't the same as what he shared with Rey, but it gave Leia a general sense of her son's well being.

Ben was not okay.

She had felt his pain and distress well before an old friend of Han's had contacted her to let her know about the fight. 

The details were still unclear, except for reasons she couldn't imagine, her son had tried to take on several members of Guavian Death Gang. Ben had promised that he wouldn't get involved in any petty prison squabbles, but here they were.

Even more frustrating, Leia had been told that she couldn't get in to see him. Her contacts couldn't give her a clear picture of how he was doing, other than he was alive, something she already knew.

She tried to reach out to Ben, to ask how he was doing, but all she could do was feel his anguish, confusion, and pain.

When it became clear that her political contacts weren't going to get her into the prison anytime soon, she decided to take matters into her own hands. Simply acting like she had the authorization to be there combined with her fame, got her a fair way into the prison. The Jedi mind trick got her the rest of the way, and soon she had a guard leading her to her son.

He had been placed in solitary, which seemed better than finding him in the infirmary. As the cell door opened, Leia noticed a bacta patch on his forehead, so maybe he'd been to the infirmary after all.

What worried Leia was the frenetic energy that rolled off of him. She could tell that he'd been pacing back and forth in the small cell. 

"You will leave us," Leia ordered the guard. Her son was dangerous, but not to her.

"I will leave you," the guard repeated.

On her way to the prison, she'd told herself that if he wasn't half-dead, she was going to kill him, but even though his injuries seemed superficial, her heart melted.

"Are you okay?" she asked, all thoughts of reprimanding him gone.

He laughed a little madly. "Tell me, mother, what the fuck did my father have to do with the Guavian Death Gang?"

That was not what she had been expecting, although it was hardly surprising that Han knew a variety of people in this prison. 

"I'm not sure," she admitted. "Knowing Han, he probably owed them money."

"Fifty thousand credits to be exact!" he barked at her.

"I'll take care of it," she tried to calm him.

"Take care of it! Just like that?! I tell you he was involved with a group of cyborgs called the Guavian Death Gang, and you don't even bat an eye?"

He was surprisingly upset by this, and then she had a shocking revelation. "Ben, your father was a smuggler, you knew this, didn't you? That…that wasn't exactly a secret."

He finally stopped his pacing, to lean back against the wall of the cell, before sinking down to the floor.

"I…I mean, people said that. Assholes from the Elder Houses who thought you shouldn't have married him and their asshole kids. But I thought…Maker, how many other secrets did you keep?"

Of all the explanations she thought she owed her son, this hadn't been one of them. "Ben, we were always honest about this. I'm sure I called your father a smuggler all the time," she added helplessly.

"You called him a scoundrel!" he was on his feet again, looming over her, practically screaming in her face. "Fuck!" he spun on his heel and slammed a fist against the wall. "Do you know how many fights I got into defending him?"

That shocked her. Of course, she remembered the fights, they had been one of the reasons they had decided to send Ben to Luke. She seemed to remember once getting him to admit that someone had said something about his father, and she had told him that Han could take care of himself and didn't need Ben to defend him.

What else had she said? She couldn't remember. How deeply had she pried? Not deeply enough, it seemed.

"Were you helping him?" Ben asked, his voice growing small and weak. "Were you using your position in the Senate to help him smuggle..? Tell me it wasn't spice."

"No!" Leia said firmly. "He was never involved in the spice trade. And he stopped smuggling when he joined the Rebellion. He never asked or wanted me involved in any of that."

"Really?!" he was suddenly looming over her, but she was long past being intimidated by his physical presence, especially when he was so fragile. "So, this is a debt that was just hanging around for forty years?"

Leia struggled to find what to say. How to explain that Han had gone back to his old ways without making it sound like it was Ben's fault.

While she was silent, he pulled away from her and sat down on his heels rocking on the balls of his feet, his face in his hands. 

"I thought he was a hero," he said weakly, almost too quietly for her to hear.

She knelt down next to him and rested her hand on his cheek. "He was. Your father was a complicated man. He wasn't just one thing. He-"

His anger caught her completely off guard. It erupted like a volcano throwing her back against the opposite wall of the cell.

"But I'm not?! He gets to be complicated; you can be a liar and Vader's daughter, but me?! I have to be perfect and pure?"

She started to get to her feet. "No one-"

"Everyone!" he screamed at her. "All you ever wanted was your perfect little son. And when I wasn't perfect, you shipped me off to Luke. And when I wasn't the perfect Jedi…" he gasped for breath and stopped himself.

She waited, realizing there was something he needed to say, trying to give him the space to say it. Instead, he lifted her gently with the Force to push her out of the cell. Then he violently slammed the door of his cell shut between the two of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Guavian Death Gang](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Guavian_Death_Gang)
> 
> So the only scene of the entire Sopranos series I remember is the daughter explaining to her brother, whose 13 or so at the time that their dad is not waste management (or whatever it was) but a mob boss. And I realized that considering Han had a high profile legal career as a racer during Ben's childhood, that it was possible he really didn't know about his Dad's criminal past. Anyway, I'm curious what you guys think.


	10. A Different Path

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo is ambushed at night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TROS left me too drained to come up with a bunch of new Knights of Ren, and figure out how to describe them. Plus, these guys deserved more time than they got, so I’ve filled in the remaining ranks of the Knights of Ren with cannon versions. So other than Kassa Ren, (and Volo who died a few chapters ago), here are the remaining KoR.
> 
> Ap’lek  
> Cardo  
> Vircul  
> Usher

Kylo woke with a start.

He usually was not a deep sleeper. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this fast asleep, but Kylo had worn himself out both physically and emotionally as he had paced the cell they had put him in after his fight with Guavian Death Gang.

When exhaustion had finally taken him over, he had fallen into a deep and dreamless sleep. But now he was fully awake, some instinct having roused him.

Although he was alone in his cell, there was something else, someone else. He could feel their intent focused on him.

He closed his eyes and centered himself, extending his senses beyond the confines of his cell.

It was all he could do not to smile. 

Finally! Two of the Knights of Ren were coming for him. He and his mother had been right, Coruscant was where the Knights were now based, hidden somewhere in Galactic City. And he didn’t even have to look for them, they were coming to him.

He lay still and steadied his breathing. It was best that they think he was still asleep. 

Quietly the door to his cell opened. Despite their heavy armor, the Knights moved quietly.

There was barely any sound as the axe descended on him, but Kylo could feel the sudden rush of air when he turned to catch the large weapon by the shaft. He yanked the weapon down safely to the side of his neck, to unbalance the knight. Then he raised his foot to catch the Ap’lek in the stomach and flip him over Kylo’s head and steal the axe from him.

Kylo rolled to his feet with just enough time to dodge the shots from Cardo’s blaster.

Ap’lek cursed at Kylo and lept forward to regain his weapon. The axe was arguably more valuable than a lightsaber, Mandalorian forged beskar was hard to come by.

For a moment, they struggled over the weapon, but Kylo didn’t want to risk Cardo firing on both of them, so he let go, knowing how much Ap’lek valued it. It threw the Knight off balance and gave Kylo the opportunity to get behind him. That put Ap’lek between himself and Cardo’s many guns.

From this position, Kylo could put one arm around the man’s throat, to position him as a shield, while he used the other hand to rip off Ap’lek’s helmet.

Kylo had always wondered if Ap’lek was a devout Mandalorian, and half expected the man to scream in humiliation and rage at being unmasked. But he didn’t.

“Guess it’s not the way,” Kylo said.

Cardo had taken aim at Kylo’s head, and just before he fired, Kylo reached out with the Force to alter the knight’s aim just enough that it hit Ap’lek instead, and his living shield became dead weight.

Cardo backed out of the small cell, realizing that the close quarters put him at a disadvantage against Kylo.

In the meantime, Kylo reached out, and Ap’lek’s axe sprang into his hand. He spun the axe experimentally, getting used to the weight and balance of the weapon. 

_Not bad,_ he thought. The weapon was perfectly balanced, and the beskar should be able to deflect most blaster bolts. It wasn’t a lightsaber, but it would do. 

The attack by the Knight’s hadn’t gone unnoticed. Alarms were beginning to ring throughout the prison, and Kylo could hear the prisoners in the nearby cells start to yell at the commotion.

He blocked it all out. Only one thing mattered. Finding Cardo and tearing Rey’s location out of his head.

Luckily the remaining Knight was not being subtle, and several unfortunate guards who had come to explore the commotion lay dead or injured in the hallway.

Cardo was clearly leading Kylo to the yard, where the Knight no doubt thought he could set up a better shot than in the narrow confines of the prison. 

Kylo was so focused on trying to guess where Cardo would take his shot from, that he almost didn’t notice that Vircul had been lying in wait for just this moment. Instinct caused Kylo to raise the axe at the last moment, and he just barely prevented the scythe from taking off his head.

He quickly scanned the area to make sure none of the other Knights were lying in ambush. When he was sure it was just Vircul and Cardo, Kylo smiled. In the yard, he would finally have space to really fight, and it was time to remind his remaining Knight’s why he was Master.

* * *

Kylo couldn’t stop staring at the 20-meter tall hologram of his mother that flanked one side of the entrance to the former Jedi Temple, turned Imperial Palace, turned museum. On the other side was a similar hologram of Bail Organa. Both holograms seemed to smile and wave at the visitors, which Kylo thought was in poor taste, considering the large banner that hung between them advertising the museum's current main exhibit. 

“Remember Alderaan!” it declared in bright lights.

“I think they got my good side,” a modulated voice said from behind, nearly causing him to jump.

What appeared to be a small ubese had come up behind him. Kylo had to admit, his mother had become quite proficient at masking her Force signature.

“It that get up really necessary?” he asked as he took the dark robe she offered him, to cover up his prison jumpsuit.

He pulled the hood down over his face, to emphasize that the helmet she was wearing was probably overkill.

She pointed at the hologram. “I think people in there might recognize me. Also,” she held out his lightsaber to him. “I think this is more likely to go unnoticed than that axe. Do I want to ask?”

“Three of my Knight’s tried to kill me,” he said, putting the axe in the speeder he’d taken from Cardo. “Which is good, because that means there’s only two left.”

Before Cardo had died, Kylo had managed to rip Rey’s location from the man’s mind. He had been tempted to simply charge into the old Imperial Palace on his own to rescue her, but stuck to the original plan, and contacted his mother because this would be a lot easier with his lightsaber,

He had half expected her to betray him, and show up with the authorities. After all their agreement had been, he’d give her three days, and he hadn’t made it through one. But it was just her, a disguise, and his lightsaber.

“It’s a big place,” she said, as they started to walk towards the museum. “I don’t suppose you got any specifics on where to find her?”

“The vault,” he said.

“Makes sense.” He found his mother’s voice through the helmet’s modulator, very…disconcerting.

But she had a point. Leia Organa was not going to make it into an exhibit on Alderaan unnoticed.

“We’ll have to figure out a way to break into-”

“No, we won’t,” his mother interrupted him. “We walk in the front door, just like any other guests, head to the archives, and then we open the door to the vault.”

“Just like that?” he said incredulously. “No one’s been inside the vault since-”

“Since Luke, your father, and I broke in years ago. We had to make sure we weren’t leaving dangerous artifacts around for some poor historian to stumble on. And Luke hoped we would find some Jedi holocrons. Palpatine destroyed all of those, of course, along with most of the other Jedi relics. We couldn’t figure out how to destroy the most dangerous items there, so we sealed it back up.”

“So what you’re saying is that Palpatine’s ghost is in a room with powerful Sith artifacts that can’t be destroyed?” he asked.

“He was supposed to be dead,” his mother insisted as she casually bought them tickets to the museum.

Even though the sun was down, this was Galactic City, and night was only a theoretical concept. Since the planet-covering city catered to people from all over the New Republic, few things were ever closed, especially major tourist attractions like this.

It was dark outside, but inside was bright, and the lobby was jarringly loud. Holograms spoke from every corner, inviting visitors to see the various attractions.

He was just glad that the exhibit on Alderaan wasn’t on their way. It was bad enough when they exited the main lobby and a hologram of Breha Organa reminded them to visit the museum resteraunt before they left so they could try recreations of Alderaan’s famous cuisine.

“Doesn’t that bother you?” he couldn’t help but ask as they passed. “She was an important politician, a queen, not a signpost.”

Leia shook her helmeted head, and once again, he found the voice modulator very disturbing as she answered. “No, mom would have loved that. She could eat. You wouldn’t believe how much she could put away.”

“That’s not the point,” he insisted.

“It is,” his mother insisted. “Her death may have been my personal tragedy, but she isn’t what the Galaxy lost when Alderaan was destroyed. It lost all the children that never grew up, all the songs that were never sung, all the meals that were never shared. That’s what I want people to remember.”

She paused for a beat before adding, “You know, before someone decides to blow up a planet again.”

He decided not to respond to her dig. He could feel a hint of her anger, and that was good. That was what they would need to face Palpatine.

They traveled the rest of the way to the archives in silence. He had no idea how busy the archives typically were. It was a place that catered mostly to students and historians. But the giant rooms were completely empty except for a librarian droid. Perhaps it was the dark aura that hung over the place that had driven everyone away. In this room, the dark side of the Force was so oppressive that he imagined even the most non-Force Sensitive person had to be able to feel it.

If Kylo had had any doubt that they were close, this would have dispelled it. The former Sith lord could hardly mask his Force signature; in many ways, that’s all the ghost was.

With the archives empty, his mother took off her helmet so she could examine the door to the vault. It had been inscribed with a complex pattern, and his mother traced one section of it with the Force, and the door sprang open.

It was Kylo’s turn to have the element of surprise, and he lept through the opening, lightsaber in hand.

Ushar Ren dodged out of Kylo’s way at the last moment.

“Find Rey,” his mother shouted, igniting her own lightsaber to face off against the Knight.

For once, he didn’t mind doing as his mother told him to. He left her to deal with the knight, and he progressed deeper into the vault.

A short hallway whose walls had been stripped of their treasures and decorations opened up into a large room.

This room was not as sparse. Some items still remained here, but Kylo ignored them all. He only had eyes for the centerpiece, a massive stone chair inscribed with ur-Kittât writing and humming with dark energy. On the throne sat Rey dressed in loose black robes, seemingly asleep.

But in-between him and Rey was Kassa Ren. He had always known she would be the most dangerous of his Knights to face. She had also trained with Skywalker; she had also been a Jedi.

“Why Kassa?” he asked. “Why kneel before a ghost?”

“You really have to ask that?” she said, spinning her lightsaber as they began to circle each other. “Think of the knowledge he possesses. The things he can teach us.”

Yes, he thought, that made sense. Kassa was smart, no one had ever loved reading old Jedi texts as much as she had. The allure of Sith knowledge would have been too much for her.

“It doesn’t have to be like this Kylo, you could be father to the Emperor,” she offered him. “Think of the place of glory you would have by his side.”

“I think not, Kassa,” he told her. “I’m done with masters. And just imagine the arguments over bedtime?"

Without any other words, they crossed lightsabers. Again and again, red blade met red blade. But dangerous as Kassa was, she was never going to be a match for him.

He knocked the blade from Kassa’s hand and was about to strike the killing blow when he heard Rey’s voice. “Ben! No!” 

He stopped and looked up. Rey was awake and slowly descending from the throne, her movements slow and jerky.

“Rey? Are you all right?” he asked. Kylo was torn between wanting to run to her, and knowing Kassa was too dangerous an enemy for him to take his eyes off of her.

“Of course,” Rey said, but there was something off in her voice.

Kassa was between the two of them, although she was now unarmed.

“Rey, keep back,” he warned, “She’s still dangerous.”

Rey was just behind Kassa now, and Kylo’s heart was pounding in his chest. For the first time, he could see the curve of Rey’s belly, her pregnancy now visible. It made her seem small, vulnerable. There was so little to protect the life she carried from the dangers of the world. 

“You respect her,” Rey’s voice was oddly distant. Suddenly there was the hum of plasma, as two red beams appeared in front of Rey. He hadn’t noticed the weapon she was carrying. She snapped her wrist, and the duel beams became a single red staff.

With one more sure movement, she swung the staff, and Kassa Ren’s head hit the floor.

Kylo was overcome by a sense of deja vu. He’d seen this moment before. This was the vision he’d seen of her, the one that had made him believe she would be the one to turn when he’d brought her before Snoke.

“You shouldn’t, my boy,” Rey said, her voice becoming less and less hers. “She wasn’t even smart enough to remember the first rule. There can only be two.”

Rey laughed, but there was a strange echo. For the first time, he saw the dark aura that surrounded her, hard to distinguish in the oppressive gloom of the vault. It wasn’t her really her laughing he realized, it was Palpatine. 

This was how Darth Sidious had managed to block their bond, to keep Kylo from finding Rey, by surrounding her with his own dark essance, by possessing her.

“There can still be a place for you boy,” it was Rey’s mouth speaking the words, but now Kylo only heard the Emperor’s voice. “Call me Master, as your grandfather once did. Take his place, fulfill his destiny.”

He considered it, not because he would ever serve Palpatine; he was determined to be done with Masters, but because he didn’t want to fight Rey, and he saw few other options.

“Foolish boy,” the Emperor's ghost said, but it was Rey’s body that attacked.

For a moment, Kylo only dodged out of the way, too afraid to hurt Rey or the child to bring up his lightsaber even in defense. But he could only keep that up for a moment or two before he was forced to parry.

It was not Rey he was fighting, they had fought before, and he knew her style; it was Sidious. But it was Rey's body, so Kylo still didn't dare really attack her.

It was a battle that Kylo could never win, and suddenly he was reminded of an old argument when he was a youngling at his Uncle’s Temple.

_” Any time a Jedi must draw their weapon, they have already lost,” Lor San Tekka continued his lecture._

_“But a Jedi is meant to fight,” Ben argued. “To protect the Republic. Why else would we train with lightsabers?”_

_“The old Jedi believed this,” Tekka agreed. “They felt it was their duty to defend the Republic from the Separatists. But in the end, both sides lost, and the Empire rose, and Palpatine was the only one to triumph. There was no way for the Jedi to win.”_

_“Then what were they supposed to do?” Ben asked. “Give up, without trying?”_

_“Patience can often reveal a different path, and it is by giving ourselves to the Force that we truly understand its power.”_

_“What you really mean is, sometimes you just can’t win,” Ben replied annoyed._

He had never been one to give up. He had never found an adversary he could not overcome. Even now, he knew he had the skill to win this battle. Both Rey and the Emperor were formidable opponents; he might not have been able to defeat either on their own. But they did not mesh well together. Maybe it was the pregnancy, maybe it was Rey fighting back, or maybe it was merely the act of possessing another body, but there was little grace to the Palpatine’s movements.

That didn’t mean Kylo could bring himself to risk hurting Rey or their baby. He was every bit as trapped by the Emperor’s plans as the old Jedi order had been.

And then he knew what to do. He could not win, not today. But he could be with Rey, always, for whatever would come next. 

For once, anger was no use to him, so he let it fall away. As long as they were together, there would be nothing to fear, so he let go of his fear as well. The only thing he had to offer Rey was the promise that he would never leave her side.

Ben switched off his lightsaber and fell to his knees. He looked up at her, hoping that she would remember this, that she could see his love and would understand that this was okay, that he wasn’t angry or upset, that he knew this wasn’t her fault.

With everything he had, he tried to reach across their bond to share his love with her.

The red blade of her staff carved through the air towards his neck, and in the very last second, he saw recognition in her eyes. He saw Rey looking back at him, not Palpatine before his vision was overwhelmed by blue light, as his mother’s lightsaber, intercepted Rey’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ubese   
>  Ur-Kittât   
>  Imperial Palace/Jedi Temple
> 
> All the major beats of this chapter had been planned out when I first began writing the story. But I will admit before TROS I had thought about leaving this as a cliffhanger where it wasn't clear if Ben lived or not. But that seems too cruel/in poor taste these days.
> 
> Also, it is my personal headcanon that Kylo Ren is a Mandalorian fanboy.


	11. A Vision Fulfilled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey suddenly comes awake, only to find herself in the middle of a battle with Ben and Leia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the kudos and comments. You can also find me [here](https://clock-work-crow.tumblr.com).

Nothing made sense.

For a moment, Rey thought that she was having a vision. Only she'd had this one before, on Ahch-To when she and Kylo had reached across the Force to touch hands. 

She'd seen this exact moment, Ben Solo, one with the Light, looking up at her with love and acceptance on his face.

She'd been so sure of this moment that she hadn't thought twice about surrendering to him and the First Order.

Rey realized two things at once. First, her back hurt, and you didn't have back pains in visions. Second, she was about to kill Ben Solo.

She screamed, but no sound came out of her lips. She was suffocating in Darkness. Her body was not her own. But she could feel Ben's love reaching out to her through their bond (how long had it been since she'd felt their bond?) and it was a lifeline. The one thing that allowed her to breathe.

She couldn't stop the swing of the lightsaber, all she could do was reach for him, and beg him to forgive her. But as she reached for his light, the darkness that had infused her shrank away. The presence that had taken over her body couldn't stand against the two of them together.

At the last moment, Rey had control again. Her body was hers, and she put everything she had into stopping her lightsaber (when has she gotten this lightsaber?) from decapitating Ben.

When her blade was stopped by a green lightsaber, she was relieved, if still confused, especially when she saw Leia on the other end.

"Stay away from my son," the General said, her words laced with anger. 

Rey stumbled back, as Leia used her blade to push Rey's blade safely away from Ben. But the General didn't stop there. Rey suddenly found herself on defensive as Leia switched to the offensive.

"Leia, wait," Rey called out in confusion. She managed to keep her defenses up, but it was difficult, her whole body simply felt wrong.

Leia didn't seem to hear her.

"I will never let you be reborn," Leia practically growled at Rey.

Then there was laughter, the same terrible laughter that had been echoing in Rey's head for what seemed like years. Out of nowhere, a cloaked figure seemed to materialize behind Leia.

"Yes, the child is tainted now," the figure said to Leia. "You must destroy it."

Rey knew the voice, although she could not give a name to it. The voice had been whispering in Rey's ear, telling her she needed to give up her baby, showing her future after terrible future where Rey failed as a mother, where she hurt and destroyed her own child.

"Leia stop," Rey pleaded, confused by the dark power running through her former mentor." This isn't you." 

"Mother!" Ben yelled at Leia from behind.

Without missing a beat or even looking, Leia threw one hand behind her, using the Force to throw Ben back against the wall. There was an unpleasant cracking sound as his head hit the wall.

"Ben!" Rey yelled, even as the laughter continued. 

Something in the look of horror on Rey's face must have finally gotten through to Leia because the other woman paused in her attacks.

It was the opening Rey was looking for. She managed to dart around Leia and tried her best to hurry to Ben's side; her body still feeling foreign. It was as she knelt next to Ben that she began to understand what was wrong. 

She was pregnant; on some level, she had known that, but whereas before there was no outward sign, now her belly had grown. It was a terrifying indication that she had lost a great deal of time. Rey didn't know a lot about being pregnant, but she was pretty sure it was a more gradual process.

She couldn't worry about that right now. She reached out to examine Ben with the Force to see if he was okay. But the Force slipped from her grasp. She had no focus, she was too frightened and confused, and the light eluded her.

Ben was struggling to get back to his feet. He was not out of this fight with… With who? Who were they fighting and why?

The specter appeared again, this time by Ben. "She will never trust your child," it whispered. "She will always believe it to be corrupt and damaged. Just like she always thought you were corrupt and damaged. Your child will never be safe while she lives."

And Rey understood the only thing she needed to know; the spirit was trying to turn them all against each other.

"Ben, don't listen," Rey begged him. It didn't matter that Leia had been trying to kill her a minute ago. Killing his father had split him in two. Killing his mother would be something he would never recover from.

"You were meant to be a Jedi," the ghostly figure continued to whisper in Ben's ear. "It was their fear, that turned you to the Dark Side. And their fear will consume the child as well."

Maybe Rey couldn't find the Light within herself to heal Ben, but that didn't mean she was powerless. She focused her anger and funneled it at the ghost, hoping that the Force could, in some way, strike the spectral being.

For a moment, Rey thought it had worked. The specter vanished. 

Then she felt darkness crawl along her skin. The words she heard were both inside and outside of her head, as if it were own doubts given a voice.

"Look how broken and weak he is. The moment he doesn't get what he wants, he will abandon you and the child."

She wanted to scream in defiance, but the voice wasn't done.

"Or will it be you who leaves him? Broken and injured in the wreckage? You know you don't have the strength to be a mother. It will destroy you, and you will abandon your child just as your mother abandoned you."

For a moment, Rey was paralyzed, because of course, the voice was right. She'd seen it, she'd seen a hundred different reasons and ways she'd abandoned her baby. She'd lived them over and over. And always there was the voice assuring her that all she needed to do was give the child to him and it would be taken care of.

While the ghost was taunted both her and Ben, it had left Leia alone. That was a mistake. The General had stood totally still; her head bowed in meditation. Suddenly Leia's head jerked up. From one of the walls, what appeared to be a medallion of some sort suddenly ripped itself free as Leia pulled it towards her.

"No!" the ghost shrieked.

But it was too late. Leia's lightsaber flashed and struck the medallion cutting it in two. The ghost vanished, and suddenly the room felt a thousand times brighter, even though the lighting hadn't changed. Rey felt like she could breathe easy as a terrible darkness was lifted.

Rey extinguished the lightsaber she was holding, she'd worry about where it had come from later. 

Ben did the same before whispering her name like a prayer and pulling her close to him. He kissed her forehead, and she leaned in gratefully to him.

"Who? What was that?" Rey asked, trying to make sense of everything.

"Emperor Palpatine," Leia answered.

And that's when Rey sensed it. The darkness was not gone from this room, even if it was a thousand times less.

It still radiated off of a stone chair, that seemed to call to Rey. Even more disturbing, it continued to roll off of Leia in waves. Unlike Rey and Ben, Leia had not put her lightsaber away.

The General's eyes were intense as they fixed on Rey. "There is still darkness in you," Leia accused Rey.

Ben put an arm protectively across Rey and her belly, as he positioned himself between the two women.

"Mother, it's okay," he said. "Palpatine is gone. The Sith are gone. It's just Rey," he tried to reason with her.

"That's what I thought," Leia said as she slowly advanced on them. "I thought I could protect you. That my love was enough…" the pain in Leia's voice might have been heartbreaking if it hadn't been mixed with a murderous rage.

"Leia!" Suddenly a new blue light shown softly on the enraged Princess's face as her twin suddenly appeared. "Don't make my mistakes. Trust and love," he told his sister.

Rey felt a sense of whiplash. Leia dropped her saber as her anger and fear fell away at the sight of her brother. But even as Luke's ghost brought Leia calm, Rey could feel Ben's anger flare. As Leia snapped back to the light, her son began to recede again into the darkness.

Just like that, Luke was gone, his soft blue light replaced by one that was painfully bright, as the chamber was filled with light and noise.

"Police! Surrender now!" a patrol droid called out from behind them as it flew into the room.

It was followed by several other officers, both droid and organic, who all trained their weapons on Ben.

"Kylo Ren, release the hostage," one of them said.

Putting himself between Rey and Leia had put him in a position where Rey was also between him and the entrance. The police had interpreted this as him using her as a shield. 

She expected him to rage, to blast them with the Force. To light his weapon and take them all on.

But he did none of these things. Instead, he took a couple steps to the side of her, raising his hands and lacing his fingers behind his head. He knelt down and let the police stream into the room and place binders on his wrists without putting up any resistance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don’t worry this is not the start of another long separation. These two are finally going to have to deal with some stuff. I haven’t drafted out all the chapters yet, but pretty much every chapter from here on out has both Ben and Rey.
> 
> I can’t remember now if this interpretation of Force ghosts and the Sith was always considered Legends not regular cannon, but I think this was the original article I found that explained what could happen to powerful dead Sith.
> 
> Although why I'm bothering to lore justify brining back Palpatine at this point is beyond me.


	12. Old Voices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben Solo dreams. Rey tries to find her footing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided this chapter deserved a Dark Rey tag. She's been through a lot, okay guys.

Ben Solo dreamed.

He climbed a dark hill, searching for his daughter. He reached the crest of the hill and looked down to see a field covered in wildflowers. But she was nowhere to be found.

"That's because she was never real," a man's voice said from behind him.

He turned, lightsaber ablaze to face the stranger.

Ben did not know the voice, but he knew the face even if it was younger than it had been when the man had died. "You," he said with disappointment.

"Me," the ghost agreed. "And if anyone should be disappointed, it's me, considering the things you've done with my name."

"I haven't used your name in years," Ben argued.

Then he heard his own voice on the wind. _" It's Master Ben Solo. The Jedi have always endured with patience. Even when Order 66 was given…"_

"Do you want a piece of advice?" a new voice said. "Don't argue with him. My old Master always finds a way to act like he's right."

Ben turned towards the new voice, a retort ready until he saw who it was. "Grandfather?" his voice broke as he saw the new ghost.

It was not Darth Vader he saw, but the young Jedi, Anakin Skywalker, as he had been before his fall. Even so, Ben couldn't help but going down on one knee before the one member of his family he had always wanted to talk to.

"Don't do that," Anakin said. "Make me feel like I just choked you. And maybe call me Anakin, grandfather makes me feel old."

Obi-wan snorted.

Ben got up but kept his head down. He was afraid if he looked at the apparition, it would vanish. Ben had planned for this moment for years, the moment when his grandfather would finally speak to him. He had a thousand questions, a thousand things he wanted to say. But a new one crowded them all out.

"Why now?" he asked.

"That's a question you must answer for yourself, young Solo," Obi-wan said.

Ben was ready with a retort but bit it back when he saw his grandfather roll his eyes at Master Kenobi.

Then Ben found his heart breaking as he realized the answer. "I wasn't listening."

Anakin nodded at him.

"It doesn't seem as if there's much point now," Ben argued. "It's over, Snoke, Palpatine, they're both gone."

"They are," Anakin agreed. "But Ben, it's only just beginning. Rey will need you now more than ever. It's time for you to finish what I started. It's time to bring balance to the Force."

Ben laughed bitterly. "I'm not good at balance. I'm not even sure I know what that means."

"No one knows the answer at the beginning," Master Kenobi said. "And only a few are wise enough to know it at its end."

"Don't listen to him," Anakin said. "I mean, he's right in an annoyingly vague way. But we're not here to impart mystical sayings to you. Well, not only to impart mystical sayings."

"Sorry," Obi-wan said. "Old habits. But Anakin is right. We're here to tell you a simple thing. You'll never be the Jedi I was." He paused. "And that's a good thing. I once told Anakin I loved him as a brother. I should have admitted I loved him as a son.

Ben stood in shock, and then remembered this was just a dream. There was no way a true Jedi, such as Obi-wan Kenobi, would say anything like that; would ever admit to such an attachment.

"Love can be dangerous," Anakin said, "It can be a path to the dark side, as it was for me. But it was also my path back to the light. Your love will fill you with anger and pain," he promised, "but it will also fill you with joy and peace. And that is what the galaxy needs, peace."

"That's not the Jedi way," Ben argued.

"It wasn't," Obi-wan said as he faded away.

"It's time to find a new way to build something new," Anakin said as he began to fade. "Oh, one more thing," his image suddenly solidified. "If you ever _do_ have a daughter, whatever you do, don't freeze her boyfriend in carbonate. It only encourages them."

And just like that, Ben was alone. He was no longer on a hill; the ground had become even under his feet.

When he woke up, he rehearsed the dream in his head. That's all it was, he tried to tell himself, a dream. If anything had become apparent the night before, it was that peace was something that Ben would fail at.

Then the dream was driven out of his thoughts by his memories of what had happened the night before.

For a few glorious moments, Ben Solo had found his center. He had found his place in the light, he had been the Jedi his family had always wanted him to be. 

Then Luke Kriffing Skywalker destroyed it all.

His Uncle's ghost may have brought his mother back from the edge of darkness, but he only reminded Ben that no matter how much he had tried to be a Jedi, he had been judged a failure.

Ben wanted to rage, to smash things, to cut down the officers that had the nerve to think they could arrest him. But he had felt the swell of Rey's belly when he had held her, Ben could feel the life growing inside of her, and he couldn't risk their daughter.

So he had surrendered.

Being arrested the second time had been no more interesting than it was the first time. This time, however, Ben could distract himself with Rey. Palpatine was no longer blocking their connection, and it was easy to reach out to her.

He didn't know what to say. He could still feel Rey's confusion, her pain, and her fear. His mother had not been wrong to say there was darkness in Rey. Still, it was her darkness, the darkness that had always been there, amplified perhaps, by whatever Palpatine had been doing to her these last few months, but Rey's none the less.

So instead of saying anything, he had simply sent her his love along the bond. It was a terrifying thing to do, and he felt ashamed that he had never said the words to her.

He added it to his list of things to do.

He had promised when they got off of Garnik V, he would cook her a real meal. He would do that, he would make her a feast, and Ben would tell her how much he loved her as they shared it.

Which was why he had felt like a bit of a coward for going along with the police, for not escaping right away. 

He was supposed to be at her side, wasn't he? Shouldn't he be with her and not waking up in a prison cell?

If he had been anyone else, Ben could have pretended that he had no choice, that he was…well a prisoner. But he knew if he chose to, he could escape. They hadn't even put him back in solitary, evidently because the area of the prison was very severely damaged from the attack of the Knights of Ren the previous night.

And if he escaped, what then? He would have to take Rey off of Coruscant probably out of the Core systems. The authorities would feel compelled to pursue him if he was this close. 

They could make it to the Outer Rim, but then there would-be bounty hunters. Could he really risk Rey and their daughter like that? So what, the Unknown Regions, Wild Space? Give up the on the galaxy and go into a self-imposed exile? No, he didn't want that. 

It was a problem he turned over and over in his head. Prison at least gave him time for reflection, and as long as he stayed, he had more options open to him. Escape would narrow his possibilities.

* * *

_He tore apart the galaxy looking for you, _Leia had told Rey.__

__Rey supposed those words were supposed to bring her comfort; they didn't._ _

__She had, after all, seen it all unfold time and time again. She now knew it had been the voice of Palpatine she had heard in her head. His ghost had been the one to show her future after dismal future, all in an attempt to convince her to give up her child to him._ _

__Rey was too strong in the Force for the Emperor to be able to simply take the child. He needed Rey to surrender it to him, to sever her innate connection to the baby she was carrying so he could possess it. The Emperor had only been able to possess her in the way he had with the aid of the Sith throne. As soon as he/she'd risen from it, his hold on her had begun to loosen until with Ben's help, she had broken entirely free._ _

__Leia tried to tell Rey it was over, Palpatine was gone, Rey hadn't given in, and whatever dismal futures he had shown Rey didn't matter. But Leia didn't understand one simple thing. In every vision Rey had seen, she had always failed for the same reason, because of how much she loved Kylo and their child._ _

__It was their love that destroyed everything._ _

__And should she have been surprised? The Jedi must have forbidden attachment for a reason. She had seen how much Leia and Han had loved their son, and it hadn't been enough._ _

__How could she ever possibly think she could do better?_ _

__She felt Kylo reaching for her along the bond, his emotions enveloped her, wrapped her with warmth and love for a moment here and there. And when he pulled away, it just left her cold and alone as ever._ _

__Because she knew what she had to do, and she knew he wouldn't forgive her. In her last lucid moments when the trial had been ending, she had believed they could run off together, that they would find a way to make it work. Now she had seen all the terrible ways that ended._ _

__She also knew that if she ran, he would follow. She had to try and find a way to convince him not to._ _

__After a long night of police, lawyers, and a visit to a doctor, the two women had finally ended up back at the rooms Leia had rented on Coruscant. Leia had encouraged Rey to get some rest, which was a little ridiculous. Rey had been asleep for almost two months, it seemed, but she smiled anyway and told Leia she would try and rest._ _

__Instead, she waited until she felt the older woman drift off to sleep._ _

__Rey supposed it should be harder to get into a prison, especially one that thought it could hold Kylo Ren. But it was easy to alter the will of the guards, to convince them that she belonged, and to take her where she needed to be._ _

__A guard led her to the cafeteria, he would be eating lunch with the other prisoners now. The room was loud and obnoxious. No sooner did she step inside, but there were cat-calls and whistles. One of the closest prisoners started towards her, and Rey raised her hand, and the entire half of the room was frozen in place._ _

__Her eyes instantly found Kylo, he was sitting at a table alone. She had felt his anger rise when he'd seen the prisoner move in on her, but she had acted quicker._ _

__Fear spiked through the room. On the one side were the prisoners she had immobilized, terrified by their inability to move. On the other side were those she had left untouched, who were confused by what they saw. They were so noisy that she raised her other hand and froze them as well so that there would only be silence and fear._ _

__Was this what it felt like to be Kylo Ren? she wondered. The prisoner's fear was exhilarating and let her ignore her own._ _

__"Rey?" Kylo asked._ _

__Of course, it was her. Wasn't this who he'd always told her she was meant to be?_ _

__She strode through the room to sit down at the table across from him._ _

__"We need to talk," she said simply._ _

__He nodded but said, "Is this really the best way?"_ _

__"Your mother said you tore apart the Galaxy looking for me."_ _

__"Always," he said, reaching across the table for her hand._ _

__She pulled back. "That has to stop," she said firmly._ _

__He looked at her with such sadness, it nearly broke her resolve. But she reminded herself that this wasn't about her or him. It was about their child. She needed to be strong for the baby._ _

__"I'm going away for a while," she told him. "And I need you to not come after me." He started to object but she kept going. "Do you love this child?" she asked, knowing what he would say._ _

__"More than anything," he admitted without hesitation._ _

__"Than trust me to do what is right," she begged him._ _

__This time he did manage to grab her hand._ _

__"Rey, you're not thinking clearly. He was in your head, wasn't he? No one understands that better than me. It takes time for the voices to recede, to figure out which thoughts are yours and which are his-"_ _

__She stood up suddenly and pulled away from him, fear and anger coursing through her._ _

__"I hoped you'd understand," she said. "That you'd wait for me…"_ _

__"Always," he promised her._ _

__He was on his feet now he started to reach for her. But she backed away, afraid that his touch would break her resolve. She had to be strong, she reminded herself for all of them._ _

__Even so, tears began to roll down her face._ _

__"I hope someday you'll forgive me," she said._ _

__She knew even as she said it, he wouldn't be able to. She also knew that given a chance, he'd follow her._ _

__She reached for him then, to cup his cheek._ _

__He leaned into her touch, and she could feel him open up the bond to send her all his love, all his confidence in her, and all his need for her to stay._ _

__Rey had thought she was ready, she wasn't, but it was too late. The moment she touched him, she used the Force to put him to sleep, and then to catch him before he could fall. Gently she lay his head down on the floor and brushed the curls away from his eyes._ _

__Then she turned to run, hoping she would have enough time to make it off the planet before he could wake up._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the Kudos and comments. You can also find me 


	13. I'll Always Follow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey asked Ben not to follow her. He doesn't listen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully, some of you guys are still with me. I know the last chapter was rough, but Rey needed her chance to freak out. But we are through the worst of the angst.
> 
> Also, I always assumed after TLJ that Kylo's scar would remain very visible even after it healed. Like if you didn't know him, but where trying to describe him, it would be one of the first things you would notice. They actually made it so subtle in TROS that I didn't realize that Rey healed it, or maybe I was just clueless. Regardless this fic assumes that the scar is very noticeable because I planned things this way before TROS, and I'm sticking to it.

"You know I'm sorry, right?" Rey said, trying to get Ben's attention.

"For what?" he asked, refusing to look at her. Instead, he stared intently in the mirror as he continued to shave.

She wasn't really there, this was only the Force connecting them, and he was annoyed to find that he could still see her in the mirror.

At least she was a beautiful sight. Not just because she was always beautiful to Ben, but because she looked healthy and safe. She wore a long dress that crossed over her breasts, much the way her old tunic had and was gathered tightly under her bust, only to fall in long loose waves over her stomach. The fabric was almost white at the top and faded into a deep green.

It was the dress that convinced him she was somewhere safe. He couldn't imagine her dressing like that if she was likely to have to fight or run. It wasn't the first such dress he'd seen her wear when the Force connected them, and it made him suspect that someone was taking care of her. The dresses weren't fancy, and with the pregnancy, it was possible she found them more comfortable, but he had a hard time imagining her buying herself multiple pretty dresses.

Someone else was looking after her, which he was glad of, but also made him angry because it should have been him. 

"It was my fault, wasn't it?" she asked. "The bacta tank?"

 _Of course, it was,_ part of him wanted to say. Rey had left him unconscious in the middle of a cafeteria full of prisoners, who, if they hadn't had reason to dislike him before, certainly did after she'd terrorized them by freezing them in place.

He was just lucky the prison guards had stopped the other prisoners from killing him while he was unconscious. Even so, the damage to his organs had required a little over a week in a bacta tank.

"Is that what my mother told you?" he asked.

He was reasonably sure that Rey and his mother hadn't talked since that night at the former Jedi Temple, but it was hard to know precisely where his mother's allegiances lay these days. She had been livid at what Rey had done, but that didn't mean Rey might not have reached out to the Resistance General. Honestly, he wished Rey would. Ben wished she would talk to someone, that someone knew where she was.

"I haven't talked to her, I just… I saw you. Through the bond. While you were in the tank. I never meant to hurt you."

"Then tell me where you are!" he snapped, cutting himself slightly as he did so. "Sorry," he said right away. He was pretty sure his temper wasn't going to convince Rey to come back.

"I can't," she said patiently.

Her eyes were so sad, he just wanted to hold her, but he'd learned that if he tried to touch her, she would pull away. 

Rey's darkness had lessened since that day in the prison, she was almost back to being herself. Unfortunately, that didn't mean she was any less convinced that she had to do everything on her own.

"You want me to trust in this…plan, but you won't tell me what it is. Why won't you trust me?" Ben begged her.

He washed the last of the shaving cream off his face and applied a little bacta to the cut.

"It's not you I don't trust," she said. 

"Whatever Palpatine showed you-"

"Was nothing I didn't know beforehand," she interrupted him. "He just made it even more real."

"None of what he showed you was real," he argued.

He began to apply the concealer he'd bought to the right side of his face over the scar she'd left him with.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

He debated whether to let her change the subject or not, but he was tired, and fighting with her wasn't getting him anywhere.

"Since the trial, my face is hardly anonymous anymore," he explained to her." But you'd be surprised how many people don't recognize me without the scar."

"So you're in hiding?" she asked.

"No, I'm in a hotel in Coruscant," he told her. 

After all, he wasn't hiding from her. The one good thing about her stunt in the prison was that it was the third time in less than 24 hours when his presence had nearly started a riot. First, there had been the fight with the Guavian Death Gang, then the attack by the Knights of Ren, and finally Rey's appearance in the cafeteria.

It very quickly proved what he and his mother had known from the beginning. Coruscant hadn't ever really wanted or been ready to hold him as a prisoner. It had been a political stunt that had severely backfired on them. 

While he'd been recovering in the bacta tank, a combination of his mother's backroom dealings, sound legal arguments by Hennis about abnormalities during his trial, and the Governor of Coruscant wanting to get rid of him had resulted in his sentencing being commuted.

It all happened startlingly fast, a sign that Coruscant was as corrupt as ever, and that his imprisonment was proving to be massively costly.

He was pretty sure the Governor wanted him off the planet, but Ben didn't care. For the moment, Coruscant had what he needed.

He hoped in vain that telling Rey where he was, would lead to her giving him some clue as to where she was, but she remained silent.

He continued on with the makeup. If he was better at this sort of thing, he probably wouldn't have to cover his whole face with it. On the other hand, covering up the variety of moles that peppered his face also helped make him look like someone else. The final touch was pulling back his hair and clipping it in back.

"I don't like it," Rey said as he finished.

He half agreed with her. He had always hated all the blemishes that covered his face and was happy to see them gone. On the other hand, he'd left his hair long for years to cover his ears, and pulling back his hair only made his nose stick out further. It didn't really matter, the point was not to look good but to not look like Kylo Ren.

"Well, you're not here, so it doesn't really matter what you like," he snapped at her.

And just like that, she was gone. 

"Kriff," he cursed. He hadn't meant to drive her away.

But maybe he hadn't. Now that Palpatine wasn't blocking it, the bond was as mercurial as ever. Deciding on its own when to connect them and when to separate them. Even so, he wished his last words to her hadn't been angry.

There was nothing he could do about it now. And if everything worked out according to plan, he would be with Rey soon.

He hadn't been spending his free time idly. 

His mother had stayed by his side while he'd been the bacta tank, or at least once she'd gotten him transferred from the prison hospital to a regular one. Once he'd woken up, and understood that he didn't have to worry about his prison sentence, she'd tried to convince him to come back to the Resistance with her.

He had basically laughed in her face.

Whatever had happened to him in the Jedi vault, it hadn't made him suddenly believe in the Resistance, even if he was losing his faith in the First Order.

When she realized she couldn't change his mind, his mother had left Coruscant to go back to fighting her beloved war. 

He had focused on what mattered, finding Rey.

The first thing had been to get his affairs in order. The future had become more unsure than ever, but he could at least do a few things to help Rey and his child, even if he didn't know where they were.

He hadn't thought much about finances before, but after the conversation with his mother about the Disaster Settlement, he'd looked into it, and it turned out he was ridiculously rich. Part of the agreement with the Banking Clan had involved the money being distributed through them, and they'd happily kept it in his name so they could receive their share of fees as they invested it.

Since he had never touched the money (or really been aware of its existence), it had been quietly accruing interest over the years and growing massively. Which meant the Muun weren't especially happy about the fact that he wanted to spend any of it now, but they had little say in the matter.

To his annoyance, he couldn't actually set up a trust for his daughter, since she hadn't been born yet. Instead, he had satisfied himself with making sure that there was enough money in Rey's name that she would be able to provide for her self and their daughter no matter what might happen to him.

The next part had been dealing with his father's affairs. Since Ben had been attacked in prison, his mother had started quietly paying off his father's debts, which left Ben a rather odd inheritance. He was suddenly heir to half a dozen worthless shipping companies. Or at least worthless on paper.

They had no monetary value, no assets, but they were legal entities. No doubt, Han had used them to disguise various smuggling operations. 

Which was perfect for Ben. It was an easy way for him to purchase a ship without the sale being easily traced back to him.

Especially once he found a beautiful B-Wing for sale. Not the sort of craft an independent citizen might purchase without razing a few eyebrows, but the kind of thing a shipping company might buy as an escort to keep it's cargo ships safe.

So once he found Rey, he had a quick and easy way off the planet, that hopefully wouldn't draw attention to his whereabouts.

And with any luck, the meeting he was going to would provide him with Rey's location.

Hiring a bounty hunter to track her down was too dangerous. Bounty hunters were too unpredictable, and not always concerned with bringing their targets back alive. Besides, he didn't want her captured, he just wanted to know where she was. Luckily Coruscant had no shortage of private investigators. If he was lucky, it would never occur to Rey that he would try and track her down this way.

Hopefully, the very expensive one he'd hired was about to pay off and tell him where Rey had gone.

Despite the makeup, he still used a back entrance to leave the hotel. He was a curiosity, and there could be press waiting for him. The First Order was beginning to make some headway into the Mid-Rim. Hux had heard the news of Kylo Ren's incarceration and later incapacitation, and had taken the opportunity to push forward with his assault on the New Republic.

The media loved to guess at Ben's motivations. Why had he fought with the Resistance? Why had he surrendered to the authorities on Coruscant? Why after being released, he was remaining on the planet? Avoiding them and their requests for interviews, was nearly a full-time job, one that might have been much more difficult if they had had any clue as to what he really wanted.

Then again, he was no longer as sure as about what he wanted beyond finding Rey.

He made his way to the cafe, where he was scheduled to meet the investigator, glad to see the Ithorian was already there.

"Well," Ben asked with little preamble. "Did you find her?"

As an answer, the Ithorian activated a holoprojector. He instantly saw an image of Rey sitting on the edge of a fountain, her fingers dancing across the surface of the water. The Ithroian let it play for only a few seconds before shutting it off.

"The rest of the credits," the investigator demanded.

Once, he would have reacted with anger, either strangling the P.I. or ripping the information from her head. But all he could think was that Rey was somewhere safe and peaceful. This seemed to have become his life now, flitting from anger to peace. The thought of Rey sitting peacefully at a fountain filled him with bitter sweat joy. He was happy for her but sad not to be with her. That was going to change, though.

He quickly transferred the remaining credits.

"She's in the city of Theed on-"

"Naboo," he finished.

* * *

Rey came to the park almost every day. It was hard to say if it was the most beautiful place she'd ever seen, the forest of Takodona would always have a special place in her heart, but it was undoubtedly the most joyful.

She loved to sit on the edge of the fountain and let her fingers trail in the water and watch the children play. She didn't know what was more amazing to her, that this planet had so much water they could use it for decoration, or that they built places with no other purpose than for children to play.

So whenever she felt her resolve waver, she came here, to remind herself how happy her child would be here; that this was what was best.

Then she felt something brush up against her tranquility. Kylo Ren was here, she could feel the sudden moment when his ship dropped out of hyperspace, and he was suddenly no longer light-years away, but within the same planetary system.

 **I asked you not to follow me,** she reached out with the Force to scold him.

 **You knew I wouldn't listen,** was his response. 

She sighed and told him where to find her. This was the best place to meet him, after all. This was the place she was strongest in her resolve.

The waiting was almost unbearable. Rey knew that landing in a busy capital and then getting to where she was would take some time. She could even feel his own frustration at not getting to her sooner, but it still felt like an interminable wait.

When he finally arrived, he had the nerve to just stand there and stare at her for a minute. When she looked over at him annoyed, he at least had the decency to hurry over to her.

She was surprised to see him wearing something of his own volition that wasn't one hundred percent black. His shirt was actually white, although he wore black pants. Over it, all he wore a dark grey robe with the hood pulled up to hide his face.

"No makeup?" she asked as he sat down next to her.

"You said you didn't like it," he told her. "And hopefully, everyone still thinks I'm on Coruscant."

"Does that matter?" she asked.

"It's easier," he shrugged. "Why Naboo?" he asked.

"Can't you guess?"

"I'd like to think you're here because it's beautiful, green, there are oceans…"

"But?" she asked. Kylo was right, those were some of the most important reasons she'd chosen this world.

He hesitated. "But I'm worried it has something to do with Palpatine."

She almost asked what Naboo could possibly have to do with the Emperor, but something stirred in the back of her mind. A stray fact that she was worried came from the months the Emperor had possessed her. Yes, Palpatine had been from Naboo.

She shivered.

"No, that…" she wanted to say that had nothing to do with her decision to come here, but she was no longer sure.

He put his hand on her shoulder. Each time the Force had connected them in the last few weeks, she had pulled away, unwilling to let him touch her across the bond. There was something too monumental about being able to touch across star systems. 

But this was ordinary, something any two people could do, and she realized just how much she had missed being touched.

She leaned into him, and when he realized she wasn't drawing away, he pulled her into his arms. She buried her face against his chest and without meaning to she let go. Rey had been telling herself she was strong, that she had it all together, that she knew what she was supposed to do, but suddenly she wasn't so sure.

"You are strong," he whispered in her hair. "It just takes a while, but I promise, you're mind is your own again, and in time, you'll stop doubting what are your thoughts, and what were his."

She wanted to believe him, she almost hated him for being the one person who really could understand.

"When did it happen for you?" she asked. "When did you know Snoke was out of your head?"

He shook his head. "It wasn't like that. There wasn't one clean moment. Where I suddenly said, yes, I'm just me. After all, I'm pretty sure cutting him in half wasn't his idea," he joked.

She looked up at him, their eyes met, and he broke out in a smile that was huge and genuine. It reached all the way up to his eyes in a way she had never seen before. Yes, she had seen him smile, but not like this, not without reservation, not without holding some piece of himself back.

"Ben?"

He nodded. "It gets a bit lonely, though," he teased. "Being all alone in your head. That's why I couldn't stop looking for you."

And she could feel it, the bond open and inviting. He was laying himself completely open to her, but she was still too afraid of being so free with him. Because if he could see what she intended, he would stop her.

"You need to go," she told him.

"No," he shook his head. "I'm not leaving you alone. I'm not giving up on you. I-"

He was cut off by the blaring of a siren. 

Everyone stopped to look around. It was day time, but the street lights came on and began to blink in succession as if they were trying to lead somewhere. 

A woman's voice was suddenly broadcast across the city.

"People of Theed, this is not a drill. Please proceed to the nearest emergency shelter. If you do not know where the nearest emergency shelter is, please follow the lights. They will guide you. Again this is not a drill, the planet is under attack. Please proceed to the nearest emergency shelter in an orderly fashion."

Both she had Ben were on their feet. Something rippled across the sky, and it took Rey a moment to realize that it was a giant shield encapsulating the city.

"You need to go," Ben said, staring up at the sky.

" _We_ should go," she said, gripping his hand.

There in the sky above, she saw a Star Destroyer descending from the upper atmosphere.

"No," he shook his head. "They have a plan. The shield is maintained by three towers. One is at the palace the others are at the northern and eastern corners of the city respectively. They'll send troopers to each location to bring down the shields from the ground."

For half a second wanted to ask him how he knew this, before realizing he must have helped design these attack plans. Rey could see what looked like three squadrons leave the Star destroyer and begin flying towards the separate parts of the city.

"You need to go," he told her.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"Please, Rey, you need to get underground. I'll go to the north tower, maybe I can help hold them off."

She wanted to slap him. If the First Order really did have an attack plan designed around Naboo's defenses, then hiding underground wasn't going to help her. 

Then she realized something. The lights were generally leading in an eastern direction.

"Don't get yourself killed," she told him as she kissed him, quickly, hoping he wouldn't sense her deception.

He looked surprised by the kiss, then smiled in a somewhat goofy manner, before running off towards the speeder he'd taken here. He glanced back at her once to be sure she had started to heads towards the shelter. She continued in that direction until she was sure he was out of sight.

Then she found a speeder of her own, although she had to hotwire hers. There was no way she was going to sit in a shelter and just hope that the First Order attack failed. It stood to reason that Naboo would have the most security at the palace, it was a palace after all. So she took off for the east tower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [B-Wing](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Prototype_B6)
> 
> [Ithorian](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ithorian)


	14. Belief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben realizes he can't defend Naboo on his own. And then tries to defend Naboo on this own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank so much for the comments on the last chapter. I've been in an odd place with this story. Last month I made sure to have several chapters written ahead of time so that I could work on a story for the RFFA fic exchange. I only just started getting back into writing this and it's taken a bit to get back into the swing of things.
> 
> Now I'm just barely ahead of what I've posted, which is also always a little nerve-wracking for me.

**The First Order is attacking Naboo. Rey is in Theed. I need you.**

For one moment, Ben let himself believe. He let himself believe that somehow, wherever his mother was, she could hear him.   
They had never been able to communicate across the stars, but he had to hope that in some way, she would know that she would come.

But as he sped towards the tower, Ben let the fear take him. It would be ridiculous to try and pretend to be a Jedi now. If the shields fell, then the Star Destroyer hanging in the sky above them would fire down on the city of Theed. It was possible that the people in the shelters would survive. Possible but not a guarantee.

This meant that if he failed, Rey and his child would likely die. He took his fear for them and used it as fuel for his power.

He never thought he would be thanking Palpatine for anything, but he had to admit he was grateful that the former Emperor had decided to invest in the defense system for his homeworld after it suffered from several attacks during the Clone Wars.

Now he just had to keep that defense system intact. If he could quickly clear the invaders at the northern tower, maybe he could move on to the other two, and keep them from falling. At least he’d thought to rent a speeder when he’d landed on this planet.

The tower was an easy landmark to make out. Theed was not a city of skyscrapers like Galatic City, the Palace was the highest point, so the other towers were easy to spot.

Beyond the energy shield, he could see the transport landing and the stormtroopers streaming out of it. The shields were designed to keep out energy weapons and fast-moving projectiles. But something moving slowly could get through them. 

This meant the stormtroopers could march through by simply slowing their pace when they came to the perimeter.

By the time his speeder reached the battle, dozens of stormtroopers were already fighting their way up the tower, while their comrades continued to slowly press their way through the shield.

He lept from the speeder, igniting his lightsaber, and hurled himself towards the troops trying to push their way through the shield. This was where most of their forces were, and if he could stop the onslaught here, hopefully, the Naboo soldiers at the tower could push back the troopers who were already on their way to the top.

If he began with the element of surprise, he lost it quickly. Whether they recognized him without his black attire or not, they surely understood the threat his lightsaber presented. He swept the blade around him in a deadly circle reflecting back the blasts from the rifles of the stormtroopers who’d made it through the shield. 

The stormtroopers that didn’t fall to the reflected blasts, he pushed back with the Force, knocking down them and their comrades behind them. That gave him time to close the distance. He needed to cut them down fast. All three towers needed to stand for the shield to stay up, and there was only one of him.

His weapon was a whirlwind of red as he carved his way through the troops who hadn’t made it to the tower yet. Once the ground was clear, he turned to look behind him. The Naboo Security Force didn’t seem to be a match for the better trained and more ruthless stormtroopers; they were losing ground fast.

But Ben couldn’t return to the tower as quickly as he wanted. His assault had taken him outside the shield. Although it was easy to pass out of the shield, he had to slow down to pass back through. It was also very unpleasant, like a current running across his skin, and wished he had his old armor to deflect some of the sensation.

It wasn’t even properly painful, so he couldn’t use it to further stoke his power; just annoying and unpleasant. But he was through, and now he could begin the work of clearing the tower. 

Fighting his way up wasn’t easy. The stormtroopers quickly identified him as a greater threat than Naboo’s security and were firing down on him from the upper levels of the tower. 

They had the high ground, but there was nothing for it, but to slowly fight his way up the stairs.

Suddenly the alarms went quiet, and a familiar voice came across the loudspeakers.

“Hello, yes? Naboo security? This is Master Rey. The Jedi are in the process of securing the northern and eastern towers. So don’t worry about them. Just please keep the Palace tower secure. Thank you.”

For a moment, Ben was frozen in place. She couldn’t have… Could she?

Then the sounds of the fight around him began to fade, it was the familiar sensation of the bond connecting them. Except instead of Rey appearing next to him, he saw her leaning down from one of the upper levels of the tower a stormtrooper’s blaster in hand as she fired down at a target he couldn’t see.

“I thought you’d be farther by now,” she had the nerve to say.

“What the hell are you doing?” he barked at her. 

She didn’t answer. 

“Rey?!” he called in a panic, pushing his way through two stormtroopers on the stairs ahead of him. He fought his way up one more level, but there was still one more between him and Rey.

“Give me a moment,” she yelled from above. “I’m in the middle of a battle, you know.”

“I told you to get to a shelter.” Panic was filling him now. He used the Force to knock two more stormtroopers over the railing and had finally made it to the same level as her. 

“Out of the way!” she yelled at him at blaster pointed directly at where he was coming up the stairs.

He flung himself dangerously to one side, before remembering that she couldn’t actually blast him. She had tried that the first time the Force had connected them.

On the other hand, he wasn’t sure his lightsaber might not hurt her, so he had to be careful as he fought the stormtroopers that seemed to be right around her.

“Took you long enough,” she told him.

“I’m sorry it took so long to take care of the dozens of troops at the bottom. How did you get up here so quickly?”

“Oh, you fought the reinforcements first?” she said, taking another shot at an enemy he couldn’t see. “I went for the high ground. Easier to secure the tower, that way.”

As if to prove her point, one of the troops who was up above him, took a shot that he only dodged at the last minute. It really was difficult having them above him. So he supposed he was glad that Rey was having an easier time of it, except he didn’t want her fighting at all.

“Well, I was trying to clear out all the towers quickly,” he said defensively. 

“Uh, huh? How’s that going for you,” she said smugly.

As he fought his way up, she slowly pulled back with him.

“Look, there was a plan,” he insisted. “And it involved you being safe.”

“There a Star Destroyer about to fire on the whole city,” she argued. “I’m safer making myself safe, then being safe…You know what I mean.”

“Rey-” he started to protest.

“Less talking more fighting,” she insisted. 

It was hard to disagree with that. The last thing Ben wanted was to distract her at a crucial moment, especially when he couldn’t see the enemies she was fighting.

Realizing the top of her tower was clear, made him realize how quickly he needed to get to the top of his. He wasn’t going to let this be the tower that fell, and if the troops above him managed to dismantle the shields, she would have put herself in danger for nothing.

After several more minutes governed by fear and worry over Rey’s situation, he managed to clear his tower.

“How many more,” he called to Rey, who was stilling firing on soldiers below her.

“A half-dozen maybe,” she called back.

He tried not to smirk. He had managed to secure his tower faster, after all. Then he felt foolish for being proud that his combat skills were better than those of a pregnant woman who’d had to steal a weapon from her enemies.

“I could be there-”

“No,” she cut him off. “If you’re clear, you should move on to the Palace. Before-”

She stopped as the sky flickered above them. They were staring out in different directions, but they were seeing the same thing, the shield generator at the Palace must have failed because the shield above the city was collapsing.

He could hear the sound of furious blaster fire, as in a futile last attack, Rey took care of the last of the troops at her tower before coming to stand next to him.

He could see the Star Destroying moving into to position, and it’s forward cannon, began to charge. At this range, there was no telling how much of the city would be devastated by the blast.

“Hurry,” he begged her. “You’re at the perimeter of the city, you might be able to get far enough-”

“No,” she said calmly, lacing her fingers with his.

He couldn’t remember the last time they’d touched without being in some state of conflict. Without one of them being angry or guarded.

He could feel his eyes tearing up. It couldn’t end like this.

But Rey’s eyes were focused on the sky.

“You know,” she said thoughtfully. “It’s really the same as a blaster bolt, just you know, bigger.”

He was about to object, but he thought about it for a moment. Rey wasn’t wrong. One of the hardest things to learn when training with the Force was to let go of the ideas of size that were tied to the physical world. The Force didn’t care about mass. Although he realized that didn’t really apply to laser fire anyway.

“I can’t tell exactly where they are aiming,” he said. “I’m not sure if I can shield the whole city.”

“We,” Rey squeezed his hand as she emphasized the word and reminded him that he wasn’t alone. “Aren’t going to raise a shield, they’ll just keep firing until they wear us out.”

He looked at her in wonder. She was crazy for even suggesting this, but she believed, and he found that looking at her, he did too. He squeezed her hand and nodded.

They both fixed their eyes towards the horizon and reached out together towards the Star Destroyer as it fired. The sky turned red as the main cannon’s beam filled the sky and then…stopped.

He could feel her hand trembling in his at the effort of halting the massive amount of energy. Neither of them could speak, but she squeezed his hand lightly, and he knew it was time. As one, they raised their outstretched hands and forced the energy back at the ship.

They both gasped in relief as they realized they done it.

“Ben,” his name rolled off her lips like a prayer, he looked down, and she grabbed him and kissed him.

They were out of practice, and her none bumped awkwardly against his for just a second until their mouths locked into place, and he did everything he could to devour her. Because they were alive, and as long as they were together, he couldn’t imagine anything standing against them.

Finally, he pulled back, needing to breathe and smiled at her. For just one second, he felt her hand on the side of his head and then just like that she was gone. The bond deciding for its own reasons to break the connection.

The natural sounds of the world rushed back, he could hear an explosion on the Star Destroyer. They had not managed to deflect the blast directly back at it but had hit it at an angle. Which meant it still had its main canons.

Alone he knew he could never deflect another blast; he wasn’t even sure if he had the strength to do it again with Rey by his side. And if they fired again…

He was exhausted, but not entirely out of it. He gripped the railing of the tower tightly and took a deep breath, and when he exhaled, he sent his spirit with his breath, racing out across the city to the Star Destroyer seeking out the command bridge.

**Here I am!** he screamed at the ship. **You fired your biggest gun at me, and I’m still here!**

The First Order crew couldn’t hear him, of course, not his words anyway, but they could feel him. He had tried to teach Rey a specialized form of Battle Meditation when they had been stranded on Garnik V, and he hadn’t given up the pursuit of the elusive skill during his time with the Resistance.

Now he unleashed his anger, on the First Order, sowing fear and disarray among the officers, disrupting their chain of command, and doing his best to crush their spirit.

It wasn’t much, but maybe, just maybe it would be enough to keep them from rallying before help could arrive.


	15. Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leia arrives at the battle of Naboo.

**The First Order is attacking Naboo. Rey is in Theed. I need you.**

"Ben?" Leia couldn't help but gasp as the plea came to her.

But he was gone as quickly as he'd come. A whisper that Leia might have thought was her imagination except that she would never have imagined her son would plead for her help.

No, this was real. This was the Force at work, and General Organa was ready in an instant.

She had nearly failed her son and Rey on Coruscant, she would not fail them now.

"Get the fleet ready for hyperspace," she ordered through the comm in her office. "And open up channels to all our allies."

"General, what-" whatever else Connix was going to say was lost as Leia rushed to the bridge.

"General, we don't have any intelligence about a First Order attack," Poe insisted. "They haven't called for help."

"We do now," she told him. "Rey is there."

It was a little dishonest. It implied Rey had been the one to tell Leia of the attack, but the General didn't care. Her personal feeling aside, this was exactly what the Resistance needed, a chance to catch the First Order in the middle of an attack when they weren't expecting it. It was a chance for the Resistance to stand up and defend a world that hadn't yet fallen.

"Is there anything out of Naboo?" she asked hopefully.

"No, General," Connix told her. "They haven't called for help, but…"

"But what?"

“I don’t think we’re getting _anything_ from Naboo. The planet seems to have fallen silent."

That was actually good. It meant that the First Order was attacking, and was blocking communications to hide the attack. Instinct told Leia this was the moment, this was the place to make a stand.

So once the main Resistance fleet was underway, she began to reach out, to call out to the allies she'd been trying to make over the last few months. This was the moment, if they were going to stand up and fight, it needed to be now, she told them. 

Now she just had to hope they would come.

As they dropped out of hyperspace, Leia took in the situation. The First Order no longer had the mighty fleet they once had, but they were still a few Star Destroyer's strong. But it was the position of the enemy fleet that sent a chill down Leia's spin. They were low in Naboo's atmosphere, intent on bombarding the planet. It meant they were vulnerable to a strike from above, but it also meant the civilian causalities were likely to be massive.

Then a sense of peace and resolve descended over Leia. They would fight, and they would win; orders began to fall from her lips, and within moments the Resistance fleet was coordinating with Naboo's own small military Force.

The General would have expected the Naboo forces to have been nearly crushed by the initial First Order onslaught, but it seemed they were doing remarkably well, and they were focused on what they could do, and not overwhelmed by what they couldn't.

Suddenly Leia understood, it was Rey. She could feel Rey's light reaching out for all of those who were trying to defend Naboo. The young Jedi was unifying them in purpose, giving them hope, sharing their victories, and fighting back against the despair of their defeats.

Leia knew it for it what it was, Jedi Battle Meditation, although she had no idea where Rey had learned it. And as Leia became aware of Rey, she became aware of Ben as well. While Rey brought hope to Naboo's defenders, Ben was doing his best to sow fear and despair among the First Order.

The First Order formations were falling apart, their maneuvers were sloppy, and their morale was shredded. What should have been an easy conquest was falling apart around them.

They tried to rally against the Resistance fleet, and Leia pulled her own ships back a little. It was true that she could decimate the Star Destroyers. Still, with them so low in the atmosphere of Naboo, any ship they destroyed would crash into the planet with potentially devastating consequences. 

Leia was willing to give up thee small advantage to save lives. Maybe it was a foolish optimism given to her by Rey, but Leia knew they wouldn't be alone for long. She knew the allies she had called in would come.

She was right. 

Not all of them, of course. The Rodian's never showed up, the Camino sent a handful of ships only, and vessels from the Core worlds were noticeably absent. But there were ships from Ryloth, Kashyyyk, and Lothal. Also a few Mandalorian clans arrived, and who wouldn't want them on your side when fighting a war?

By all rights, it still should not have worked. A dozen different fleets should not have been able to come together without any proper planning and defeat a well-oiled machine like the First Order. But they had Rey to unite them, and Ben to divide the First Order.

Leia watched the battle unfold, and knew that they would win.

* * *

As her shuttle descended towards the Royal Place, Leia was amazed that the damage to the city had not been worse.

The Palace itself was not in great shape. There had been a massive First Order ground attack launched against it, and the stone walls had been built for majesty, not to repel blasters. As they landed, Leia could see the carnage of the ground battle, as well as crews beginning to try and put out some isolated fires.

People underestimated how much there was to be done once a battle was over. There were prisoners to be dealt with, injured to attend to, and a balance to be struck between letting your own forces rest and pushing whatever advantage you might have won. Although Leia could claim that she was landing on Naboo instead of overseeing the fleet so she could better coordinate with the planetary forces, the reality was more selfish.

 _We have the Jedi, they are safe,_ Queen Oamuys had told Leia in the aftermath.

Those words twisted Leia up with an array of feelings she wasn't ready for. During Ben's trial, it had felt like a cruel mockery to talk about him as a Jedi. But she had felt something fundamental shift in her son during the fight with Palpatine. She had been in too much shock from her own brush with the Dark side to fully appreciate the easy way he had surrendered to the authorities.

After he recovered from his injuries, injuries that Leia blamed on Rey, he wanted to find the girl, but it wasn't the same possessive drive that had driven Kylo Ren to turn against the First Order. He simply wanted to be sure she was okay.

He saw Rey's struggle with the Dark Side, and despite how it had hurt him, he reacted with compassion.

There was still anger, there were still countless sharp jagged edges to her son, but for the first time, Leia could fully believe that her little boy hadn't been completely lost.

 _We have the Jedi, they are safe._

The words repeated over and over in Leia's head. The truth was she still had some very choice words for Rey, but the Queen's words gave Leia a feeling of hope she hadn't felt in a long time. Unlike the younger members of the Resistance, Leia had felt a certainty that with time the First Order would fall. She knew wars could be long drawn out processes, that they weren't won overnight. Even if she didn't live it to see the end of the First Order, she was confident that it would inevitably be overthrown.

She was less sure about what that victory would cost her. It would be easy to blame her apprehension about her impending grandchild on the fact that Palpatine had tried to corrupt the baby before they were even born, but she also knew how trying raising a child could be. As much as he wanted it, she had a hard time seeing Ben as a father.

Until now. 

Maybe just maybe, he and Rey could make it work. Leia hoped they could. She wanted her son to have the family she and Han had failed to give him.

An escort was waiting for her shuttle as it landed, likely to lead her safely to the Queen's command center. Moment's later, she saw Finn approaching; he had led the Resistance ground troops that had tried to reinforce the Palace's own forces. 

"General," he greeted her. "The rest of the First Order ground troops have surrendered." Then he broke into a wide grin. "You are not going to believe the crazy stuff they think Rey did."

"Oh?" she asked as they moved into the underground command center beneath the Palace. Finn was clearly bursting at the seems to tell her.

"Yeah, they say she caught a blast from a Star Destroyer and threw it back at the ship? Can you believe that?"

Leia laughed. "Well, it's not the craziest war story I've ever heard."

"I'm surprised to hear you say that, Your Highness," Queen Oamuys said, rising from the console she'd been sitting at.

She was dressed simply, as any member of the royal guard might be, not in the full regalia of a Queen of Naboo, but Leia recognized the voice.

"Your Majesty," Leia gave a slight bow befitting a visiting princess. She'd rather act as a general, but the Queen had already addressed her by her royal title, and Leia was used to shifting between roles as the social situation dictated.

"I will admit, I was skeptical about the powers of the Jedi," the Queen continued. "But I would have thought you would be more familiar with them. Truth be told, I'm not sure what I find more miraculous, that they can be in two places at once, or that they can stop the might of a Star Destroyer."

The confusion must have shown on Leia's face because those were both things far beyond what she thought the Jedi could do.

The young Queen smiled a little, clearly delighted at having surprised the older woman. 

"Would you like to see?" Oamuys offered.

Leia wondered if this was really the best use of their time, but her curiosity was too great. "Yes, Your Majesty." She replied simply.

"Bring up the footage," the Queen commanded.

Security footage came up on several monitors and began to replay two battles that had happened earlier. For the first few moments, Leia watched as her son, lightsaber in hand assaulted the troops trying to storm one tower, while Rey, joined forces with the Naboo security, stole a stormtrooper's blaster, and proceeded to secure another tower.

"Wait," Finn said after a minute of watching it. "Is Rey pregnant?"

"Uh, yes," Leia admitted. Neither she or Ben had shared the news, with the other Resistance members. There had seemed like no right way to explain it, and it had seemed like it was Rey's news to share.

"Wait? Who's the fath-" his eyes went wide, and for a moment, Leia thought he'd answered the question for himself. But it was what was happening on the screens that distracted him.

Suddenly it was hard to tell if they were watching two battles or one. Both screens showed both Rey and Ben, and although it looked like they were reacting to each other, they also seemed somewhat oblivious to some of the soldiers around them.

There was no audio, so Leia couldn't tell what they were saying, and the whole thing was very hard to track.

Then the fighting came to a stop. Both Rey and Ben were standing on the top levels of both towers. Their eyes were both focused on the sky, and then Rey took Ben's hand. There was an intensity to both of them despite how still they both stood.

Up until then, Leia had been ignoring the other monitor that had shown a Star Destroyer handing low in the sky about Theed. But it was hard to ignore as the screen went entirely red for a moment, as the main cannon fired down on the city.

Rey and Ben rose their hands together, and a moment later, the screen that had gone red, had a clear view of the Star Destroyer again, only this time there was smoke rising from the side of the ship where it had been hit by its own blast.

Then Ben and Rey were kissing, clearly unaware they were being filmed, but Leia was pretty sure by the intensity of it, that neither of them would have cared if they realized it.

A moment after they pulled back from the kiss, something happened. Suddenly instead of seeing the couple on two screens, Rey was by herself on one and Ben alone on the other.

The recording ended. 

"I'm afraid not much happens after that," the Queen sounded a little disappointed.

"I don't understand how?" Finn asked.

"I suppose that's the bond Ben told us about," Leia responded. 

She realized a second too late she had called him Ben, not Kylo. He hated that. It had been a struggle for Leia to use the name he had chosen, and at that moment, she'd forgotten.

"You said they're here?" she asked the Queen.

"Yes, I had them picked up and brought her. It's a good thing we aren't going to have to withstand a siege. According to our droids, they seem to be trying to eat everything in sight. Is that normal for Jedi?"

A lot of less than polite responses occurred to Leia. Her son had just helped save the city of Theed. If he wanted to eat, let him eat. But years in politics had taught her to hold her tongue, sometimes.

"Yes, after using that much power. Will you take me to them?"

"Of course, my apologies, Your Highness," the Queen said as she led the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First things first. A lot of great Kylo stories came out yesterday durning the RFFA Valentine's Gift Exchange. I received a wonderful gift I received [between the shadow and the soul](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22613842). It a fantastic little piece about Ben on a smuggling mission with his dad getting captured by Kira Ren. The Han/Ben dynamic is great, and I love the tension between Ben and Rey. 
> 
> Secondly, I have no idea if it bugs people or not that I allowed the Force Bond to be recorded, and I'm kind of curious if it does. A regret of mine in how I plotted out this fic was that I didn't think about how Luke's sacrifice at the end of TLF affected the Galaxy. But I always assumed that his fight with Kylo must have been recorded and shared, because how else did the broom boys learn about it.
> 
> Of course that's not the Force bond. And if they could be recorded, doesn't that mean that First Order cameras would have seen Rey during TLJ? Well, whose to say they didn't? I kind of like the idea that the whole way Snoke found out about the bond was some security officer showing him the footage and ratting out Kylo. Then Snoke realized he could use it to his advantage and take credit for it. (Or he was trying to make lemonade out of lemons).


	16. Needs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben and Rey recover from their massive use of the Force.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the comments on the last chapter. I'm not sure why I was so worried about having them be recorded. After all, they're space wizards, not vampires, totally different rules.

Ben glared in indignation at the cart that refused to move and considered the absurdity of the dilemma. A droid had recently left the room, having delivered more food on a cart, but Ben had been distracted and hadn’t insisted that the droid bring it closer because of a loose wisp of hair that rested on Rey’s cheek.

Now he was trapped and about to starve to death, with a tray of food right in front of him, and all because Rey was taking a nap with her head in his lap.

Evidently, she was the sort of Force user who needed to sleep after a massive expenditure of energy, unlike Ben, who always got hungry. No, he decided, hungry didn’t do the feeling justice. It was like his stomach having given up on receiving food was going to try and devour itself for substance. He absolutely had to get up and get to that food.

Except one of Rey’s hands was gripping his leg not tightly--as if she was hanging on for dear life--but lightly as if it were the most natural and comfortable place for her hand to be.

All he wanted to do was protect her, keep her safe, and let nothing ever disturb her sleep.

His stomach rumbled as if to call him a liar. Okay, so he wanted to do two things, protect her and eat. 

As if to prove just how badly he needed to eat, he couldn’t muster up enough of the Force to roll a small table _that had wheels_ close enough for him to reach the food.

This was it; this was the ignoble death of Kylo Ren. Starved into oblivion while a girl snored in his lap.

The door to the room opened, and he quickly dropped his hand, not wanting anyone to know he didn’t have the strength to summon a tea cart.

It was the Queen Taska Oamuys, followed by his mother and Finn.

Annoyance flashed across his face, as their arrival woke Rey, and she began to sit up and wipe the sleep from her eyes.

He felt cold without her, but also free to pursue the elusive tea cart. 

“Rey,” Finn said, rushing over to hug her.

“Finn!” Rey squealed, hugging him back.

Ben paused halfway to the food to glare at the former stormtrooper who so easily elicited so much joy from Rey.

He was about to say something, but his mother managed to catch his eye and shook her head. Instead, he shoved the cart over to the bench.

“Thanks,” Rey said, and before he knew what had happened, she had stuffed half of the sandwich-- the one he’d been eyeing since the tray arrived--into her mouth. She swallowed it so fast he didn’t know how she didn’t choke, and then was on her feet.

“Uh, where’s the bathroom?” she asked the Queen of Naboo. “I really need to pee.”

“Oh, of course?” the young Queen said, surprised. “Uh this way, Master Jedi.”

He watched dumbfounded as the whirlwind that was Rey disappeared, escorted by a Queen, to the bathroom. Of course, the Queen wasn’t in her full regalia, she was dressed as an ordinary member of Naboo security. It was likely Rey had no idea who the young woman was, but it was indicative of the way Rey moved through the Universe, his little nobody, who so easily commanded the attention of everyone she met.

Ben thought his heart would burst just from being near Rey again, and he almost chased after her. And if she wasn’t back by the time he finished eating everything on the tray--except her sandwich, he’d leave that for her-- he would have to track her down.

“If I find out you hurt her…” Finn started to say.

Ben had forgotten about the other man, and once he had finished chewing these berries, he would respond to that threat, because with his mother present, he wasn’t going to risk talking with his mouth full.

“That’s enough,” his mother said, coming between them. “Rey can take care of herself. A little too well perhaps, and there are more important things to deal with. Like dismantling what’s left of the First Order, reintegrating former stormtroopers into society, rebuilding the New Republic…”

He glared at his mother at that last one.

Before a new argument could start up, Rey and the Queen returned.

“Oh,” Rey said in disappointment, looking at the nearly empty tray of food. “You ate all the little round blue ones. Those looked good.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, feeling awful at not having considered what Rey might like to eat. 

“I’d be happy to send for more koro berries, Master Jedi,” the Queen said.

“Oh, it’s fine, Your Majesty,” Rey said, blushing. She tried to do what Ben imagined she thought was a curtsy. Evidently, she’d found out who Oamuys was. “You’ve done so much already.”

“Nonsense,” the Queen said. “You saved my city, possibly my planet. The least we can do is feed you.”

“Careful,” Finn said. “Feeding Rey can be a full-time job.”

He was satisfied to see Rey glare at Finn before she addressed the Queen again. “I was in the city, so it wasn’t a big deal. And it really is a beautiful city you have.”

“What Master Rey means,” his mother corrected. “Is that the Force has a way of making sure the Jedi are where they are needed. Masters Rey and Ben are only glad that the Force guided them here in time.”

It was all he could do not to roll his eyes. He could see what his mother was doing. She was trying to paint him as some sort of Jedi hero. The only reason he didn’t object was that it was such a stretch there was no point in refuting it. The galaxy wasn’t about to stop seeing him as Kylo Ren, his brief time on Coruscant had convinced him of that.

A commlink buzzed, and everyone looked at Rey. 

“Oh, um is there somewhere I can take this?” she asked the Queen sheepishly.

“Yes, of course,” Oamuys said, leading Rey back into the hall.

All Ben could do is stare after her, and wonder who could possibly be calling her, and why she didn’t want them to see or hear.

* * *

Rey felt a little bad about leaving the Palace, although she wasn’t sure how much there was for her to do in the aftermath of the battle.

But the Amiteys were worried about her. After everything they had done for her and what they were going to do, she supposed they had every right to make sure that she and the baby were okay.

So after talking to them on the commlink, she decided that there wasn’t much point in her staying at the Palace. But it wasn’t until she promised both Leia and Ben that she would see them the next day, that she’d been able to leave.

Ben.

Leia had called him that, and he hadn’t objected, hadn’t insisted that she call him Kylo instead.

Rey didn’t have much time to dwell on that. The Queen--who was embarrassed that her Palace wasn’t in any condition to house guests--had insisted on making sure the Rey had a security escort to her destination. That had gotten her across the stunned city to the Amitey’s home quickly.

There was a great deal of fussing and lots of question when Rey got home. They wanted to know everything, had she made it to a shelter, okay? Had seen been hurt? How was the baby?

She assured them she and the baby were fine. And she lied. She lied and told them that she’d been near the Palace and had taken shelter at a bunker there.

She couldn’t tell them what had really happened, because if they discovered she had the Force — if they found out the Force was real — then they would forever wonder if her baby had it. And the whole point of the Amiteys was that they were nice wonderful people, who desperately wanted a child, and were apolitical, not interested in any old religions, or galactic politics.

They were a couple who would raise her baby on this beautiful planet, in this beautiful house, with love, as if it were any other ordinary child.

Rey had thought long and hard about this, and the best life she could imagine giving her baby was one without the burden of knowing about the Force. It had worked for Leia after all. She had grown up happy and unaware of who her father was, and that she had the Force.

This was the first time she had ever heard the Amiteys talk about the war or the First Order. Clearly, the couple had never thought it really had anything to do with them. Luckily for Rey, they didn’t expect her to know much about it either. What they knew of Rey was that she was a sweet girl with no family who had gotten into a bit of trouble.

After the third yawn, she was excused, with much fussing about how this whole invasion thing must have worn her out.

They really had no idea.

Once Rey was alone, she eagerly took off her sandals. Her ankles hurt, and she was amazed that something that wasn’t a broken bone could hurt so much. She tried to rub her feet, which was far more difficult than it should have been.

For the hundredth time since waking out of Palpatine’s nightmare, Rey felt like her body wasn’t her own. She had lost two months of feeling her body change, and from her perspective, it had happened all at once. She knew that nothing strange or unnatural was happening to her, but it didn’t feel that way.

There were after all tiny feet in her stomach. How could that possibly be normal?

Not that the baby was kicking right now, but still, it was the principle of the thing. 

Rey began to cry. She was sore, and she hurt, and she just wanted to be herself again. To have a body that didn’t think twice about running up a tower blaster in hand.

“Rey?”

“Kriff!” she nearly jumped out of her skin. She’d been too self-absorbed to notice the telltale signs of the Force-bond opening.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” Ben said, his brow creased with concern. “Are you okay?”

“My feet hurt,” the words tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop them, along with some fresh sobs. It felt like if her feet would just stop hurting, everything would be okay.

He sat down next to her on the bed. “I’m not very good at healing, but maybe I could try?” he sounded strangely small and helpless for a guy who had nearly knocked a Star Destroyer out of the sky earlier in the day.

She sniffed and nodded. Then she grabbed a pillow off the bed to put under her head as she laid down on her side and put her feet in his lap. For a moment, he just held one of her feet, then he sighed gave up on Force healing, and began to gently rub her foot.

“Sorry, I said I wasn’t very good,” he said. “Does this help?”

“Harder,” she told him, and the moaned when his thumb dug into the arch of her foot.

He chuckled. “I never knew it was this easy to make you moan.”

She didn’t want to be made fun of, especially when she looked as bad as she did now. But she didn’t want Ben to stop either, so she bit her tongue.

He might not have been able to miraculously make the pain go away with the Force, but somehow having him take the time to slowly rub her feet, was almost better. As she relaxed into his touch, she reached out to feel him in the Force. 

He looked over at her, he could tell what she was doing, but he made no comment.

There had been a moment back on Coruscant when his light had been blinding and pure. A terrifying moment when all his darkness had fled and, Ben had surrendered. It had given her the strength to fight Palpatine, but its aftermath was confusing. 

Rey had never met a living being who had been either purely dark or light. Even Snoke had just a whisper of the light in him. But for one blinding moment, Ben had been. It hadn’t lasted, but it had left its mark. The conflict she had felt in Kylo Ren since their first meeting had stilled. He was longer trying to snuff out the light which had grown inside of him. He seemed to have found a resting position. Not in the center, he still leaned far more towards the dark than the light, but he had found his own point of balance.

After all, he wasn’t a perfectly calibrated scale, he was a man.

And that threw everything Rey had thought she’d known out the window. Because she thought she’d convinced herself that she loved Kylo Ren, that she’d accepted that man who called himself a monster was the one she loved.

She had convinced herself that she had been a stupid, naive girl for thinking she would show up on Snoke’s ship, and Kylo Ren would just turn to the light for her.

Rey had given up on Ben Solo and convinced herself she was okay with Kylo Ren.

But since the moment she had felt the pure intensity of his light, she wondered if that was really true.

She knew Palpatine’s answer. Often in the visions he’d shown her of her future, things had gone terribly wrong because deep down, she wasn’t willing to accept Kylo Ren’s darkness. She tried to change him, she refused to give up on him, and it only ended up driving him away, and their child was torn apart in the middle of all of it.

But never once had she seen a future where he had turned to the light. None of Palpatine’s dark prophecies had included Ben Solo, because Palpatine was convinced Ben Solo had always been a lie.

Rey didn’t know what to believe, except maybe the terrible futures she was trying to avoid weren’t as certain as she had thought.

“Is that better?” he asked.

“Yes,” she told him.

She felt the baby kick, and she almost let him know. But then it struck her as cruel. If things went according to plan, he would never see this child. Their baby would grow up loved by adoptive parents.

And maybe, just maybe, somehow she and Ben could build a new future where perhaps a child was possible.

She pulled her feet away from him a little afraid he would somehow sense that the baby was active.

He was looking down at her as if he actually thought she was beautiful, which was crazy considering the absolute mess she was.

“When I was leaving, your mother called you Ben,” she said, trying to fill the silence.

He shrugged, “She gave me the name, she seems to be attached to it.”

“But, you hate it.”

He looked away from her, staring at some distant point on the far wall. “Ben Solo isn’t an easy name to have. To. . . live up to.”

She started to prop herself up, she considered asking more, but just like that, he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So last time I mentioned the RFFA fic exchange. Now that the authors have been revealed I thought I'd mention the piece I wrote. A 6 chapter Post-TROS Senator Ben Solo piece. [The Falcon and the Wolf](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22425694/chapters/53581006)


	17. An Unquiet Mind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay. I actually had this chapter finished before I finished the last one but after the comments on the last chapter, I wasn't as sure about it anymore and wanted to get several chapters done. Then I went back to re-read this last night to try and get the motivation to work on this story again and realized this chapter was now very awkward.
> 
> Warning: Grocery shopping after a disaster.
> 
> Which is part of why I'm posting now, even though I'm not as far along as I want because I feel like this will just become more and more awkward over time. I have more thoughts, but I'll leave them for the end.

Ben had a plan, a simple plan. He would keep the promise he had made to Rey on Garnik V, and then she would understand that everything was going to be okay, and she would stop crying and running away from him.

Months ago, he had promised her that when they got off the planet, he would make her a real meal. Sure, it had been a while, but he felt he had a series of good excuses for not having made good on that promise yet.

That was going to change today.

He had taken the first steps the night before. The Queen had been profusely apologetic that the Palace was able to house visitors at the moment. That was fine with him, he wasn't really keen on being anywhere that public. 

His mother had returned to her fleet and had offered to house him on the ship, but he had turned her down. He didn't want to stay with the Resistance. Instead, he had looked for a hotel. Not the luxury sort that catered to wealthy tourists and dignitaries, but the sort whose clientele were traveling professionals who were away from home for long periods of time and didn't want to eat out for every single meal. In other words, that kind that came with a kitchen.

So he had a kitchen, now he just needed food. In the early morning, Ben put on his hooded robe and went to find the local markets.

He had no way of knowing what the market was usually like, but it was a quiet and subdued place this morning. Many of the stalls had not been opened, and only a few people were milling about. The city had almost been destroyed the day before. Most people it seemed had responded by staying home, presumably with their families. But some people seemed to need normalcy, to pretend nothing had happened. Those were the few people who were out and about today.

It was a strange and uncomfortable atmosphere. Especially as Ben found it hard to sympathize. He'd been training in combat since he was a young boy. He hadn't faced his first existential threat until he was twenty-two when he'd woken to find his uncle standing over him with a lightsaber. The few times he had felt genuinely safe were the aberration in his life. He could count the handful of peaceful nights he'd had since then. They'd all been spent with Rey on an uninhabited planet.

On the plus side, it meant there were fewer people likely to recognize him.

It turned out he had a more serious problem than being recognized. Much to his embarrassment, he suddenly realized he was a thirty-year-old man, about to be a father, and he'd never bought his own groceries in his life.

It had never occurred to him how hard it could be. He had vague memories of being a boy and going with Bidi along to the market on Chadrilla. Bidi always knew what to buy (perhaps because he came prepared with a list) and how to judge what was fresh and what was not. He would squeeze this fruit or vegetable (but were they supposed to be firm or not?) tap on this melon (what was the proper sound for a melon to make anyway) and come away with everything they would need to make a wonderful meal.

But Ben knew how to do none of that, and the open market he'd found in Theed—which was supposed to have the freshest produce in the city—mostly sold local food, most of which he wasn't familiar with.

It was long before an embarrassed Ben Solo found himself in a standard grocery store that sold typical Core world food, where at least he knew what he was buying. Sheepishly he ended up picking up several vaccu-sealed vegetables whose taste and properties at least he was familiar with along with some processed grains and precut sides of meat.

He tried to tell himself that it was really about seasoning, and the way that he prepared the meal, but he'd had this idea in his head of making Rey the perfect gourmet meal. He knew she wouldn't know the difference, but he would, and for the first time, he began to wonder if he really was ready to be a father. Because if there was one thing he was absolutely sure of, he needed to be the one in charge of future nutrition, because Rey would eat just about anything, and he was not going to have his daughter raised on rations.

Eventually, Ben had what he needed for a few meals (in case he changed his mind about one of the courses), and he packed the speeder to return to his hotel. On the way, his mind began to move from part one of his plan: Make Rey the best meal of her life. To part two of his plan: Get Rey back in bed.

Because he would never have believed giving a foot rub could be erotic, but when he'd heard the noises Rey made as he rubbed her feet the night before, he'd started to get hard. And she was so beautiful with her belly filled with his child. He'd wanted her so desperately last night, but the Force had other ideas.

Which had worried him, because he'd suddenly started to wonder if sex would hurt the baby? He'd looked it up on the holonet afterward, and it turned out sex was just fine, although worryingly, some pregnant women didn't seem to want sex. The articles he'd read had been annoyingly vague, clearly trying to assure the pregnant woman that it was fine if she did or didn't want sex.

But that didn't help him. Because it was Rey, and if she wasn't interested, was it just the pregnancy, or did she not want him at all? Because he was far more afraid that it meant she just didn't want him anymore.

Not that it had come up yet, because he hadn't yet had a chance to try and seduce her. That was another problem because seducing Rey was nearly impossible. He could do his bests to try and put her in the mood, but in the end, it probably was going to come down to him simply saying, "Do you want to have sex?" and he was going to have to work up some courage for that.

In fact, how did he even get Rey 'in the mood.' Every time they'd had sex, it had been on an uninhabited planet where there was really not much else to do. What if it had been more about boredom than actual attraction? 

Now he felt stupid for having bought candles. Would Rey recognize them as an expensive luxury, or had she had candles on Jakku because she couldn't afford power? He knew she'd grown up on an impoverished planet, but he didn't really the details of her existence there.

Probably it had been a smart move to not ask her questions like, "So just how destitute was your childhood?" On the other hand, did she think he had never asked because he didn't care?

He was starting to go into a tailspin of worry. This happened to him more and more since Snoke's deaths. It was like his mind was trying to make up for the deafening silence by letting his thoughts spin out of control.

What would a regular night and conversation with Rey even be like? He was working himself into such a state of worry that he was almost relieved when he saw the Naboo Security Forces waiting for him outside his hotel.

"Sir, we're here to bring you to the palace," one of them told him as he pulled up.

"Can I put my groceries away first?" he asked, not really in the mood for a fight, but always ready for one.

They didn't seem aggressive, and he didn't see any binders. Besides, he should probably go back to the Palace anyway, Rey had promised she would return there today.

"Oh, of course," the officer said. "Do you need help?"

"Uh, sure," he said, surprised. 

These were defiantly not First Order troops.

"So you're not arresting me?" he clarified.

"Oh, no, Sir. The Queen simply asked us to escort you," the officer said as he and the others helped him unload the speeder. 

He was so unnerved by their help, that despite them offering, he had them just leave the stuff that didn't need to be refrigerated on the counter. He'd sort it out later.

When he did finally get to the Palace, it didn't take long to realize that the Queen wasn't really behind his summons. Clearly, it was his mother. Why, he couldn't imagine, because he seemed to have no real purpose.

They were discussing what to do with all the First Order prisoners they had taken the day before. Evidently near the end of the battle, the last of the New Republic fleet had shown up. There were only a few ships left, those that had not been stationed at Hosnia when it had been destroyed. They had arrived late because they were supposed to come at all. Evidently, the Core worlds had not wanted to send the last of their fleet to defend Naboo, but the Admiral, a Rodian woman, named Praxoon, had decided to disobey the Senate and come anyway.

That had proved fortuitous because although her ships had been too late to join the battle, it had intercepted some First Order survivors that were fleeing, including Hux.

Maybe Ben was expected to have an opinion on all this, but he found he didn't really. However important the First Order had been in his past, he had never been close to the people in it and felt little loyalty considering how quickly they had fallen in behind Hux. 

Besides, the Galaxy had been a mess at least as far back as his grandfather's lifetime, it's problems would be there to fix tomorrow, but the birth of his child was on a timer. He was acutely aware of all the time that had been wasted looking for Rey, and how little time was left. 

He'd been raised to believe by his mother, his uncle, and Snoke that his place was at the center of things, he was meant to be a savior and a new future. He wasn't supposed to care more about one baby, than the fate of the Galaxy.

But he did.

It was selfish of him, but he had long ago given up on being a good man. That didn't mean he couldn't still be a good father.

"Will I be taking back one Surpeme Leader prisoner, or two?" Admiral Praxoon asked.

He had rather liked her up until that moment.

Ben didn't get a chance to respond because his mother was already going on about how he'd already been tried and asking if there was a warrant.

He wished he could believe in her good intentions, but there was too much history between them, and it was hard to trust her when all he could hear was Senator Organa.

Queen Oamuys' response was at least a little more interesting. She was evidently up to date on the details of his family and claimed his as a citizen of Naboo and a member of House Naberrie and said that she was not about to surrender one of her planets citizens to the Senate without them going through the proper channels.

This at least Ben found amusing and also illustrated exactly why the New Republic was broken. This obsession with planet's rights kept the New Republic from ever being able to do anything for the greater good of all its citizens.

The matter was dropped, and they went back to discussing where to house the Stormtroopers that had been captured.

Then he felt her. Rey was close, she was also upset. Seeing as how he didn't care at all about this meeting, he simply turned to leave, not really expecting anyone to pay that much attention to his departure.

"Ben?" his mother called after him, but he ignored her.

When he found Rey, he could see that she'd been crying.

"What is it? What's happened?" he asked. 

She didn't appear to be in physical distress, but the moment he saw her, he was reminded that she was pregnant, and Ben had no idea how he would know if something was wrong. 

"You haven't seen?" she asked.

"Seen what?"

"It's all over the news, it's everywhere. Even on _Good Morning Naboo_ , and they never talk about the war."

He was surprised to hear anything of importance was on Good Morning Naboo. Not that he directly knew the program, but the First Order had been quietly trying to buy up the media conglomerate that owned it and shows identical to it on all the Core and Mid Rim worlds. They showed the same 'news' stories across the Galaxy, just with different local hosts on each world. Their real purpose was to push any number of products and generic galactic culture, and they tried to minimize talk about the war because people didn't spend money if they were afraid of conflict.

Unfortunately, the First Order pockets couldn't compete with the corporations that owned them. So it hard been a constant battle as the First Order tried to convince the New Republic to be afraid, while the corporations sought to convince people that everything was fine and they should go shopping.

Ben couldn't imagine what sort of news would be big enough to break through that cooperate cone of silence, and yet he wouldn't have heard of it while with his mother and the Queen of Naboo.

"Tell me what's happened?" he insisted.

"Happened? No, it's us," Rey said. "We're what's all over the news."

She pulled out a holopad to show him. It lit up with the image of the two of them together, deflecting the blast from the Star Destroyer, and then, a little embarrassingly, kissing. In the background, he could hear the hosts talking about it, wondering if this was proof of a secret Jedi program that the New Republic had been supporting and agreeing that this was just another indication of how the First Order threat was overblown.

"It's everywhere," she said, tears running down her face.

She looked small and broken in a way he'd never seen before, so he took a chance and put his arms around her, wishing he had the first idea of what to say to her.

At least Rey didn't pull away but leaned into him. Yet that was frightening; it took a lot for Rey to show any sign of weakness.

"Rey, are you all right?" his mother's voice came from behind. It seems she had caught up after all.

"You did this, didn't you?" he demanded of his mother.

It wasn't really a question. Leia was up to something, Ben could feel it in his bones.

"Did what?" she asked, annoyed.

"Leaked footage of us to the press," he glared at her. "How did you even record that?"

"If you're talking about how you and Rey heroically staved the city the other day? It was caught on security footage. How the press got it..?" she shrugged.

"Don't play dumb, mother," he accused her. "I know it was you."

"Ben," Rey said, pulling away slightly so she could look up at him. "Why would your mother do that?"

The consummate political, Leia Organa, did not answer the question posed to her. "This is good for you," she insisted. "It makes you look like a hero. It humanizes you."

So that's what this was? Some sort of PR stunt? Was his mother really that desperate to rehabilitate is image. She's survived being Vader's daughter, was he really that much worse?

"But now, everyone recognizes me," Rey said. "I didn't want …it's all ruined."

"Yes, mother. Not everyone wants to be famous, you know. It's enough to drive some people to wear masks."

The truth was he didn't know if he fully understood Rey's distress, there was more going on than she was letting on. But unlike his mother, he had never particularly liked being recognized. His mother, having been happily raised a Princess, had never done much to protect his anonymity. She'd always loved her family campaign photos, and he had no interest in helping her further whatever new political ambition she now had.

"Come on," he told Rey. "Let's get out of here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be the big talk I promise. Not sure exactly when I will post it, I still have a lot of editing to do on it and want to make sure I'm confident on that chapter after that one.
> 
> Also, I've turned on comment moderation. The downside of that, I still have to read the comments, which is part of what's kept me from updating for so long. Comments that ask for killing Rey really really hurt. Every writer's process is different, I have a background in theatre, so I often treat my POV characters as if they were a part I was playing. I try to inhabit who they are. I'm not Rey or Kylo or Leia, I would make vastly different choices than any of them, but when I write from their POV I try to be them. So although I know it isn't meant that way, saying Kylo should kill Rey feels like a personal attack.
> 
> So please, no more talk about that. As I said, I have to read the comments anyway. Which is normally the best part of my day. It normally means so much when someone leaves a comment so it feels so bad to do this. Because 99% of the comments are fine.
> 
> I hope everyone is healthy and safe out there.


	18. Choices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Ben finally talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone. So glad so many of you were happy to see this story back. I'm still probably not back to regular updates, because the next chapter is not at all done, and I am a living distraction these days.
> 
> Also, this chapter has a lot of angst, but specifically some feelings of hopelessness. The world being what it is, I thought I should warn you.

"I got you some berries," Ben said, putting a small plate of food in front of Rey. "The blue ones you wanted the other day." He pushed the dish a little closer to her.

Rey hadn't eaten breakfast that morning, so she should have been ravenous, but she didn't feel like she could eat. She didn't feel like she could do anything because every time Rey tried to do anything, it fell apart.

All she wanted was to curl up in Ben's arms, but that felt cruel. She had gone to the Palace to find Leia, hoping the woman who had been such a mentor to her could help her figure out what to do about her newfound fame. Not that Rey was completely anonymous, but she could instantly feel this was different. In her time on Naboo, she had done some discreet asking around, trying to understand what people knew about her and the war.

People knew that Kylo Ren had been captured by a female Jedi and put on trial, but despite the Resistance having broadcast the whole thing, it seems like most people hadn't watched it. At least on Naboo, they were too busy with their jobs and day to day life to keep up on the ins and outs of the war. Until yesterday people like the Amiteys had convinced themselves that the war was someone else's problem.

Not only had the Amiteys recognized her, from the video of the attack, and then freaked out about her being a Jedi, but everyone she had passed while she was hailing a speeder to take her to the Palace seemed to stop and stare at her.

All of her dreams of a better life for her child were suddenly shattered. All the planning, all the effort into making sure she had found the right family in the right place. All of it was now for nothing.

In a moment of HoloNet fame, her child's happy future had been stolen.

Princess Leia seemed like the perfect person to help her figure out how to manage this. To help her understand if it was really as bad as it appeared, if everyone really was staring at her, and what to do about it.

Instead, it turned out the Princess was at least partly responsible for Rey's newfound fame. 

Rey felt terrible about letting Ben take her away from the Palace. Selfishly she wanted nothing more than to hide in his arms. Yet she also didn't want to hurt him any more than she already had.

But here she was, sitting in his hotel room while he tried to get her to eat a plate of berries while all she wanted to do was shut down and wait for the world to fix itself.

He kept fidgeting with the plate, moving it back and forth until impatiently he spoke up.

"I know what you're thinking," he told her. "Palpatine told you I'd hurt you and the baby. That I'd force our daughter to the Dark side and-"

Rey gave a sad little snort and was grateful that she wasn't eating because she probably would have choked. Because he had it all wrong…and did he say, daughter?

"You think this is about you? You're not the one who destroys our child. It's me. I'm the one who destroys everything."

"But Rey, you...your light, how could you…"

"He wanted me to give our child to the darkness," she explained. "And the more I loved the baby, the more I loved you, the worse it got. And the light, it's so lonely. The light is almost worse than the dark." She could feel herself starting to cry, and she bit her lower lip to stop herself.

For a moment, she thought he was going to reach out to hold her, but then his hands settled in his lap as if he was trying to will himself to be still while he stared straight ahead.

"Rey, I know it doesn't help to say it wasn't real, not when it's in your head like that, because it feels real. Someone who's in your head like that they can make it seem like…like you could kill your father, and it would be okay, great even."

He jumped up from the couch where they'd been sitting. The living room had a small adjoining kitchen, and he was suddenly obsessed with putting away all the stuff that had been left sitting on the counter. 

She was glad for the physical space it put between them because what she wanted to do was yell at him that he didn't understand. Because it would be easier to curl up with her pain than to admit that truth, Ben Solo was the one person who really could understand. 

She also wanted to yell at him that this still wasn't about him. But she knew he had just shared something deeply personal with her, and she knew he had only done it to let her know she wasn't alone.

Part of Rey wanted to be alone. Because alone was comfortable and safe. Alone was familiar, alone had been most of her life, until Kylo Ren had crashed into her mind.

She picked up one of the berries, then put it down again.

"I was going to do it," she finally found the courage to say. The sound of Ben putting things away stopped. "I was starting to believe him. I was going to give him the baby. I was going to give a Sith Lord, our child. Which is how I know he was right. I'm going to fail as a mother."

"Oh, Rey," Ben said sadly, and he was back at her side, kneeling in front of her trying to catch her eye. "This is the man who convinced the Republic Senate to vote to make him Emperor and give up their power to him. He could sell sand to a jawa. And you didn't give in, you were…are strong."

"I guess I'll have to be," she was despondent.

He took one of her hands in his. "Rey, you're not alone in this. If you're not afraid of what I'll do to our daughter-"

"It's not a girl," she interrupted him.

She had no idea where he'd gotten the impression they were having a girl. Maybe he wanted a girl; maybe if he found out it was a boy, he wouldn't want the baby. A moment ago, she would have thought that would have made things easier. If he didn't want the baby, then she'd be back to dealing with things on her own, which was what she was used to.

But the thought hurt her, just like everything seemed to hurt her. Because she loved their baby, even though he wasn't born yet. She didn't understand that love, but it was there; it had grown day by day as she could feel his light and life growing inside of her. It overwhelmed her and felt like it was going to crush her. It was like the ocean, this beautiful thing she had always dreamed of, but could sweep you under and drown you if you weren't careful.

So no, she didn't want Ben to not want their son, even if it felt like it might be easier if he did.

"What?" he asked, confused.

"The baby, it's a boy, not a girl."

"No, I felt the baby in the Force. Remember?" he insisted.

"Okay, yeah, but I guess the Force is bad at genetics because if it's a girl, it's a girl with a penis. Look."

She pulled out the small holoprojector the doctor had given her that held the scans of the baby. At the time, she wasn't sure if she had wanted the images, because it was really strange looking at pictures of something inside of you. Also, it made the baby seem much too real. Now it appeared they were useful.

"There," she jabbed her finger at the hologram. "That's a penis."

His jaw had gone slack, and there was a look of wonder on his face.

"That's my son…" he said. Suddenly he laughed out loud. "I'm going to have a son."

Suddenly he was crushing her in an awkward hug that she was not at all ready for.

"Ben!" she said as she tried to breathe.

"Sorry!" he let go quickly, and she could see tears running down his cheeks even though he had a massive grin on his face. "Did I hurt you? Did I hurt the baby? My son!" he said with a goofy look.

"No, we're fine," she assured him.

"You're not fine," he told her, and she watched his joy drain out of him. "I can feel it. Somethings happened. Yesterday, when I found you by the fountain, you had hope. You were so full of life, and today…"

"I'm still pretty full of life," she said, her handing resting on her stomach. It was a bad joke, and she realized he didn't even get it for a moment. Not that joke-telling was ever one of her strong points.

This was the moment she realized. The moment Ben found out the truth, the moment he never forgave her for.

For just a second, she considered lying, he never had to know she'd intended to have their child be adopted. But the fear of him finding out was too much. If everything could just fall apart now, at least then she could start figuring out how to put it together.

Even so, as she spoke, she found herself needing him to try and understand.

"Yesterday…I was doing what was right," Rey began. "I had it figured out. I just wanted our baby to have a happy life, to be loved and safe, and never worry about anything, and it was going to be so perfect. He was going to have everything that…that I never did. But that stupid holo of us ruined it all."

He frowned in confusion but let her keep going.

"I found the perfect family. Good, ordinary people who just wanted a child to love. They didn't know anything about Jedi or the Force. It was going to be like Leia. I remember her talking about her adoptive parents at the trial. How much she loved them, how proud she was of them, how she had to claim and defend them. I wanted our son to have that. To just be a person and not have to worry about the Force and the Light and the Dark…"

Rey had been speaking to the air in front of her, letting the words tumble out, and so she jumped in surprise when she had the cracking sound as Ben's fist hit the wall. She looked over to see him, hand half-buried in the soft material of the wall, while he leaned his forehead against the surface, breathing heavily.

"Ben?" she asked, steeling herself for what was to come. 

Despite the violence of his outburst, it was pain she felt pulsing off of him. He hadn't punched the wall out of anger, but in the hopes that it would hurt, that the physical pain would somehow outweigh the emotional pain he felt.

It was frightening how easily she understood him, how easily he was flowing into her. They had been cut off from each other for so long. First by the binders that had cut him off from the Force during his trial, and then by Palpatine.

The bond had atrophied during that time, and even though she had felt Ben's presence since Palpatine's possession, it had seemed like a small weak thing. When Ben touched her mind, it wasn't to bully or to take over.

It was easy to overlook the strength in that.

With Palpatine, she sometimes doubted where her thoughts ended and where his began. That wasn't the case here. Ben's pain was separate and distinct from her own, but she still felt it. Which she supposed meant he felt hers. There was no comfort in that thought because it just meant she had her own unique ways of hurting him, which she couldn't stop. It was just one more thing she had no control over.

He might feel her pain, but when he spoke, it became clear that her thoughts were still very much her own.

"Go on, justify it," he promoted her. 'Tell me all the reasons I can't be trusted with our child, our son."

She frowned. Ben was starting to be angry now, but so was she.

"You're not listening," she insisted. "This isn't about you. I can't…How can I raise a child? I have no education, no job. All I know how to do is scavenge starships." She laughed bitterly. "Why didn't I see it before. We should have crashed that Star Destroyer into this planet. Then I'd be useful. I know where to find all the best parts. I could probably strip the most valuable pieces before the other real scavengers arrived, and then maybe I'd be able to afford a doctor. I guess for a while, I don't have to buy food for the baby, just for myself. At least I do have a few extra clothes now. If I save them, I can turn them into clothes for the baby, as long as it doesn't get too cold…" 

"Rey!"

His voice startled her. She'd momentarily forgotten everything as she'd fallen into old patterns; going over her supplies, figuring out how to survive. It was familiar, which made it comforting.

"Are you…? Is this all about credits?" he asked.

"Credits?" she laughed a little. "I suppose? I didn't even think of that. That's how things work here in the Mid Rim, isn't it? Credits. I know how many portions a power converter is worth, but I don't know how many credits-"

A little hiccup of a sob interrupted her. She really didn't understand credits. They were both so arbitrary and so fixed all at once. They had no real value of their own, and yet somehow, everything seemed to be worth some set amount of credits. 

It was an overwhelming system, and what if she didn't figure it out soon enough? What if the Unkaar Plutt's of the galaxy convinced her that things were worth more or less than they really were. Knowing how much something was worth was important.

"Rey, you don't need to worry about credits," he said somewhat angrily.

"Yes, I do!" she yelled at him, getting to her feet. "Babies need food and clothes and shelter. And on Naboo, they even have toys, and I want my baby to have toys. And I don't know how schools work, but I bet they need things for that."

"Which is why I set up a trust for you!" he was shouting now.

She stood there dumbly for a moment, unsure how to respond.

"Sorry," he said, misunderstanding her silence. "I didn't mean…I shouldn't have yelled at you like that. Rey? Please say something?" Her continued silence was clearly unnerving him. "I'm sorry. I swear, I'll…"

"What's a trust?" Rey asked mostly to cut him off because she wasn't sure she was ready for his apologies, especially when she wasn't sure if he was apologizing for the right things or not.

Re regretted the words instantly. She hated admitting how ignorant she was.

"Oh? I... it's a set of investments I set aside for you, and you should be able to live off the interest for the rest of your life, as long as you don't try to buy a small moon or anything like that."

She wasn't sure if that last part was a joke or not. "I don't..? How can you know how much a person needs? How can you have that many credits?"

She let him lead her back to the couch and sit down with her. 

"I have a lot of credits, from Alderaan, and they've just been sitting there for years, except, money doesn't really just sit there, not when it's in banks and invested. It grows. And I've never needed it before, so it's just been sitting there, gathering interest and. . . None of this is making much sense, is it?"

She shook her head.

"Look, Rey, the galaxy is an unfair and awful place. The rich have money, and the systems are set up so that if you already have more money than you need, it just keeps making more money for you, and you don't have to work. And now that's you because the trust is yours. Legally. I can't take the credits back. So as long as you don't go crazy with spending, you can live a very comfortable life without ever working again."

"So you gave me everything you had?" she said, feeling uncomfortable. This all felt off to her. This was so beyond her experience, she didn't know what to make of it. She had seemed surprised by how generous the Resistance was, but she had also understood that they valued her skills. It fit into her understanding of how you traded work for food and shelter. Only the Resistance didn't try and exploit her the way Plutt had.

Similarly, the Amiteys had made sure that Rey had what she needed, because they wanted her baby to be healthy, and for her to feel comfortable that they were a good family to raise her child. It was still a kind of trade she understood.

She didn't really understand how having lots of credits could make more credits, and Ben said that it was all just hers, but she didn't trust that. People didn't just give you enough money that you would never have to work. She still couldn't really conceive of that.

He looked embarrassed. "Uh, no. I kept a lot. Most of it really. But I promise you have enough to live off of."

She felt a little better that he hadn't given her everything, because that would have been too much. But if he still had a lot more…She felt a little dizzy.

"Why?" was all she could say. She couldn't shake the feeling that everything was a trade. That there was always a cost.

He looked at her in surprise. "Because you're going to be the mother of my child. I have more than I need, and what sort of hutt-spawn would I be if I didn't make sure that you had everything you needed?"

"That's it?" she asked.

"Rey, if I wanted something from you, I wouldn't have given you the money. I wanted you to know it's yours even if-" he stopped himself. "Even when you give the baby away," he added bitterly. He turned away so that he was no longer looking at her.

His words hurt, not because he'd intended them to, but because her plans had all fallen apart. At this point, she had to tell him what had happened, but she didn't want to see him happy at her failures. She didn't want to prolong this.

"That's over," she said. "They saw what we did, and it made them afraid. I can't give our son to someone who will be afraid of him."

He grunted a kind of acknowledgment but didn't really say anything. 

"I thought you'd be happy?" she was confused.

"You're stuck, aren't you?" he said. "You're running out of time and choices."

He was upset, and yet his words gave her a feeling of hope. Because he understood. She'd begun to think Ahch-To had been a fluke. That he didn't really understand her the way, she thought he had. Now she felt like maybe he could understand her after all.

"Yeah," she admitted. "But why, why are you unhappy? Didn't you want this?"

"No," he said. "I wanted you to choose me, I wanted you to believe in me."

Rey was on her feet, needing to move away from him. Angry at him like she had never been before.

"Choose you?!" she said bitterly. "I did choose you! I wanted to be a Jedi. I thought if I was just stubborn enough that Master Luke would give in and train me. But I wanted you more. So I went to _you_. I surrender to the First Order for _you_. But you said I was nothing. You didn't want me, you wanted power. Then, on the planet, I knew that if we left everything would be ugly and complicated, that we would never be the same. But you insisted, you wanted to get back to the First Order more than you wanted to stay with me."

"I wanted to get off an uninhabited planet," he was raising his voice again and back on his feet, advancing on her. "That's not the same as not wanting you. And I wanted to share everything with you, you were, you _are_ everything to me, and all I've ever wanted was to give you everything. But nothing I have is good enough."

"You want to give me everything?" Rey had stared raising her voice again too. “Everything _you_ want. You never cared about what I wanted. You've never even asked."

"So what is it you want, Rey?" he was really yelling now. "What is it you want so badly that I keep getting in the way of?"

She opened her mouth and then closed it again as the terrible truth came crashing down on her. She didn't know. No one had ever asked. Everyone always assumed they knew what she wanted. Finn thought she wanted away from Jakku. Even Han had assumed that when he'd offered her a place in his crew, although at least he'd taken no for an answer. 

After Starkiller, she'd got so caught up in everything, that when Leia had sent her to find Luke, to become a Jedi, she hadn't really questioned it. A moment ago she'd said she wanted to be a Jedi, now she wasn't so sure.

What she had wanted was to find a place she belonged. She had suddenly been thrown into a group of people who mattered, important people, doing important things. And it had been a heady experience, she wanted to feel like she had a place among them. Becoming a Jedi seemed to offer that. But that was before she understood who the Jedi were, what that might mean.

"I don't know," she admitted sadly. "I just, I want a chance to breathe. I chance to figure out what I do want. But that's not going to happen now. I don't get to choose, not anymore."

His face changed as something seemed to slowly dawn on him, "Rey, how…how old, are you?"

Rey thought about it for a moment, realizing that since she had a last name, she probably had a real birthday, and for the first time in her life, she could actually know her age. During the trial, when she'd been presented with the information on her parents, she hadn't thought to look at when she was born, so she was still going on her old guesses.

"Twenty…I think."

"Twenty, Kriff!" he leaned back against the wall and slid down it until he was sitting back on his heels. "I knew you were younger than me, but. Twenty?" 

She suddenly felt very self-conscious. Twenty was old. Lots of kids on Jakku didn't make it to twenty.

"I remember twenty," he sounded almost bemused. "I remember feeling like every decision was going to determine the rest of my life forever, and so I didn't make any. I just went along with being a Jedi because that's what I was supposed to want. I was too scared I'd make the wrong decisions, the wrong choice, and mess everything up.

"I wasn't strong like you. If I had just been brave enough to face the fact that it wasn't working if I'd been willing to give up on what my family wanted, and done what I wanted…I don't know?" he shrugged. "No," he said after a moment, "I still probably would have ended up with Snoke, but maybe it wouldn't have been so bloody. Then again, maybe it would have been worse. All the Jedi I killed at the temple, they still would have come after me. Maybe it would have just stopped being a cold war sooner."

Ben had been staring off into the distance, almost as if he had forgotten about her, which was kind of annoying, although she hadn't been willing to break him out of his strange reverie. Now he was focused on her again.

"It's not over, Rey, there's still time to figure out what you want, the baby will change things yes, but you're not alone. I'm not going to let you starve. You don't have to do this by yourself. Because I wasn't strong enough back then to walk away from who everyone else thought I should be, but I am now. Whatever plan my mother is coming up with, I don't want it. I don't want the First Order, I don't want to rule the Galaxy. I want you. If that means living an ordinary life on Naboo, I'm fine with that. If it means fighting with the Resistance…I don't like it, but if that's what you want…fine. If it means going back to Jakku and scavenging Star Destroyers, I'm going to do everything I can to convince you that you can do better than that. But I'll be there helping you until I can talk some sense into you. Whatever it takes, just give me a chance."

He smiled at her, but there was fear in his eyes.

She wondered if it was because he could feel how overwhelmed she was by all of this. Because it didn't really feel like a chance to breathe. It felt like an immense choice, because if she gave him this chance, and he let her down. If he decided she wasn't worth it after all, if he left, she would never recover.

"I'm afraid," she admitted.

"So am I, but at least we can be afraid together?" he held out his hand to her.

She took a deep breath and took it.


	19. The Red Soup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben and Rey try to figure out what to do after a fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I'm back. I should have an update next weekend as well, I'm not really sure of my timeline after that. Thanks for being patient with me.

After Ben's fight with Rey, all his plans for a grand meal went out the window. He had come out of it feeling a bit like he'd been turned upside down and inside out.

He had always thought he understood Rey perfectly, the bond had seemingly made it easy. But he was realizing it was one thing to understand a person, and another to know them. He had never stepped back and looked at all of the pieces of Rey as a cohesive whole. He could feel her emotions, but he now realized, didn't always have the context to understand what those emotions meant to her or where they came from.

From the moment they had met, Ben had tried to incorporate her into his story as if she hadn't been a real person before they met. The problem was, he didn't particularly like his story, maybe it would be better to be part of hers, only he needed to know her better to do that.

Needing to clear his head and consider everything that had happened, he'd found himself furiously cutting vegetables, which quickly turned into a sauce. A sauce he was probably paying more attention to than it needed, but it was a helpful distraction.

Rey, on the other hand, was reading a datapad. He'd tried to find some information for her about trusts and money management. He wasn't sure how useful it was, but he'd understood at least one thing from their argument. She couldn't just believe that it was all being taken care of her for her. She needed that agency.

He had never considered how much anxiety she would have about being able to provide for their child. Their son.

Son.

That word filled him with a goofy lightheaded kind of happiness he couldn't quite explain. He'd always known the dreams he'd had of their daughter, were just that, dreams, not Force visions. Even so, he'd become deeply attached to them. He felt a little sad that she'd been nothing more than a dream.

But he loved their son. Their son, who was already not what he was expected to be. It felt strangely comforting that without even being born, their child was already becoming something other than what Ben expected. Their son wasn't an aspiration or a dream. He wasn't a plan that could go well or poorly. He was…whoever he was going to be.

Ben had been trying to push down his own doubts and fears about being a father. Maker knew there were numerous ways he could mess it up. But Ben now realized that he didn't have to foresee everything. His son wasn't a plan to conquer the universe, but a being that would come into existence with his own wants and needs. Ben didn't have to have all the answers to who their child would be here and now. He didn't have to know how the story ended, he just needed to live it as it happened.

At least he hoped so.

After using the 'fresher, he returned to the kitchen to find Rey spooning the sauce into a bowl.

"What are you doing?" he asked, rushing back into the kitchen.

She looked at him, surprised. "I'm hungry, so I was going to have some of your red soup. That's what it's for, right?"

"It's not soup," he explained, grabbing the bowl from her and trying to get as much of the contents as possible back into the pot. "And it's meant for dinner. It won't be done for hours."

"Okay, well, I'm hungry now," she said a little angrily.

"Just give me a few minutes," he told her hurriedly. "I'll make you something."

"Isn't that something?" she asked. "It smells good."

He couldn't help but smile. Hopefully, if Rey liked the smell, she would like it even better when it was done.

"Thanks, but it's for dinner. But I guess it is past lunchtime. Please, just give me a moment."

"Okay," she said a little reluctantly. "But I'm really hungry."

She proved it by practically inhaling the plate of berries that he had gotten for her earlier and had sat forgotten until now.

He was suddenly grateful for his haphazard shopping earlier. Having been unable to fully make up his mind about what he was going to make, he had bought a lot of food. Soon he had a couple sandwiches made for the two of them.

He brought the sandwiches to where Rey was sitting on the couch. Since he'd already left a hole in the hotel wall, it was a little late to be worrying about crumbs in the cushions.

Rey sniffed the sandwich. "The red soup smells better," she told him, but then she took a large bite anyway.

"It's sauce," he told her. "And it's not very filling on its own."

"Why would you make food that isn't filling? Isn't that the point of food?" she asked.

"Think you can trust me on this one?" He meant it as a joke, but somehow it came out more like an accusation.

"Sure," she said weakly. 

It hurt him to see her like this, so run down and defeated, especially when she had no reason to be. She seemed to think she couldn't handle the future, but the Rey he knew could handle anything. He wished she could just see herself the way he did.

Then he remembered how she had done just that for him when they had been stranded together. He also remembered very clearly how that had ended, with Rey riding him for all he was worth.

He tried very hard to push those thoughts away, pleasant though they were, because even more than he wanted to touch her, he wanted to comfort her, and words were not his strong suit.

"Rey," he said slowly, holding out his hand to her. "Will you...will you look in my mind? I won't look in yours."

"Why?" she asked suspiciously.

"I just…I want you to be able to see what I see when I look at you."

"That sounds horrifying," she made a sort of half gesture, as if she was going to point at her belly but then thought better of it.

He caught her wrists loosely, careful not to touch her skin. She was no longer untrained and likely to peer into his mind accidentally, but he didn't want her to think he was trying to force the issue.

"You're beautiful. You're especially beautiful like this. But that's… that's not what I wanted to show you."

She pulled her hands free and took a deep breath before putting her hand on the side of his face. Touch wasn't strictly necessary, but he eagerly leaned into her palm, relishing the feel of her skin. 

_He watched in amazement as Rey's deft fingers wove together the palm leaves of the local plants as she created a shelter for them. She was incredible. Of course, he'd known that she was strong, powerful, his equal in all things. But how could she adapt so easily to all this?_

_Or maybe she was his better. Because he had no idea what to do, and yet she knew exactly how to survive, even though this was a world nothing like the one she'd grown up on._

_She was easily the most brilliant and capable person he had ever met. What could he do other than kill and fly? Caligraphy. A useless and archaic skill._

_***_

_Rey looked up at the sky. She was more beautiful than he'd ever seen her, and if these were their last moments, he would spend them memorizing her strength and beauty._

_"You know," she said. "It's really the same as a blaster bolt, just you know, bigger."_

_"I can't tell exactly where they are aiming," he said. "I'm not sure if I can shield the whole city."_

_"We aren't going to raise a shield, they'll just keep firing until they wear us out."_

_He looked at her in amazement. She was still finding new wells of strength, still refusing to admit there were limits to what she could do. Her confidence was infectious, and she made him believe he could do the impossible, too, at least if he was with her._

_***_

_A snowflake caught on her eyelashes, and he was entranced by how it caught first the blue, then the red light of their crossed lightsabers. She snarled at him with wild, untamed power. He had never seen anyone like her._

_Then she closed her eyes, and with no training, not knowledge, called the light to her, drawing strength from some unknown well of power. Her light was blinding, her certainty, her purpose. And he could no longer stand against her._

_He fell before her, amazed that he had finally found his equal._

_***_

_Snoke held her in his grip, riffled through her mind. But the Supreme Leader couldn't shake her faith. She was strong defiant, and she still believed in him._

_"Ben!" she called out to him._

_And he answered, not with words, but with action. Snoke laughed, Snoke died, and without missing a beat, Rey caught his grandfather's lightsaber. She was beauty, power, and grace. Without hesitation, he turned his back on her, knowing that she would guard him, and promising himself that he would always defend her._

The connection broke as Rey pulled her hand away from his face. A tear streamed down her face.

"I wish that was me," she said. "But I'm just stumbling about. I have no idea what I'm doing."

He smiled at her. "I know, and yet you end up doing exactly what's needed anyway. Don't you see? That's exactly why you are so amazing. Rey, I know you're unsure. I know you're scared and alone, but that's why…" he took a deep breath. "What you've done in spite of all that, that's why I love you."

Tears were now flowing freely down her face, and she buried it against his shoulder. 

"I love you too," came her muffled reply, and he wrapped his arms around her.


	20. A Real Meal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben and Rey slowly start making next steps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes two updates in as many weeks. I may not have one next week though. I do have a fair amount written, but I'm not yet sure how the next section breaks down into chapters, if it's one really long one, or if there's a good place to divide it into two. We'll have to see what happens.
> 
> Thanks for all the comments, glad to see you guys stuck around while the story was on pause. As a reward here's a bit of fluff with a side of angst.

Ben muted his comms after the second time his mother tried to get in touch with him. It had been too exhausting a day to deal with her.

Hoping that some semblance of self-determination would help Rey feel more comfortable, he had taken her to the bank, to help her get access to her credits. It had not gone smoothly.

When Rey had come to Naboo, the adoption agency she'd gone to had set her up with a preliminary id. The problem was when he'd set up the accounts, he'd had them look up her and the information on her parents. Rey, however, had given her best guess on a birthday when she'd been asked, so the information didn't match. Therefore the bankers argued that yes she was, _a_ Rey Starfallen, but not _the_ Rey Starfallen he’d set up the accounts for.

He finally convinced them to give her access by calling up Naboo's planetary bank and asking them what paperwork they'd need to transfer all of his accounts over to them. Threatening to take his sizable holdings elsewhere got the bankers moving. Finally, Rey had access to her accounts.

But instead of making Rey feel like she had more control of her life and more options, he accidentally exposed how little she knew about the bureaucratic details that governed life in the Inner and Mid Rim.

"At least now I'll be able to pay for a place to stay," she said listlessly as she stared out the window of the speeder on their way back to his hotel.

Silently he kicked himself for not having thought about where she might have been living.

"You could stay with me, you know...if you wanted to…" he offered, afraid of what she might say.

He started queuing up a series of arguments about why it would be a good idea. It would be more cost-effective, Rey seemed worried about credits so that might work. But to his surprise, she didn't put up a fight.

"Okay, maybe, I…I'm not really the same to be around these days."

"The same as what?" he asked, truly curious. "I don't really need you to make a shelter for us, I've already 'foraged' for food. And I was hoping we could put a pause on the lightsaber battles."

"Only a pause?" she asked, with a hint of a smile.

"I'm trying to be realistic about our future," he joked with her. Then he became more serious. "But I assume you're going to want to start training again at some point after the baby is born."

"I don't know," she surprised him with her answer. "I suppose I'll have to. It's just… I've always fought because I had to. It's why I like Naboo. It seemed like a place where people didn't have to fight."

"We could stay on Naboo if that's what you wanted?" he offered her.

"Do you think people will forget about us here?" Rey asked.

They had defiantly been noticed when they went into the bank. Ben had been surprised by how gracious Rey had been by the people who stopped to thank her (one person even thanked Ben, and he wondered if they really knew who he was) despite how uncomfortable it made her.

He thought about it carefully before answering her.

"It depends on what we do. My parents kept themselves in the spotlight for years. But once my father dropped out of public life…I doubt many people would have recognized him by the time… when I killed him."

It was strange how hard it was to say that now. Ben had boasted of the fact once, even if the act had nearly torn him apart. He'd admitted it to Rey before, been able to say it when she couldn't. But those were the days when he was trying to convince himself that he wanted to be the man who could kill his father to gain power.

Power was a lie, he now knew. The nit struck him; his father would never meet his grandchild. Their son would never get to hear Han Solo brag about his exploits, or play with him. All the good childhood memories of his father rushed back and threatened to overwhelm Ben.

"Hey," Rey reached out and squeezed his hand, and he could feel her love and compassion flow into him. "Let's not die in a speeder crash, okay?"

He directed his attention back on the skyways, allowing the mundane task to focus him, even as he was amazed by the feelings she was flooding him with.

Once they were back on the ground and entering his hotel room, he asked her, "You never told me how you've changed."

"How haven't I?" she said sadly. "I'm not that stupid, naive girl who still believed her parents were coming back for her. And I sort of wish I was, because at least she had hope. Also," she paused and stood in the bedroom doorway. "I don't think both of us would fit on that bed." She gestured to her stomach.

"Hey," he said, daring to put his arm around her. "I am more than happy to do whatever it takes to fit us both on that bed." He hoped his tone sounded humorous enough, although he was very serious. Then he panicked, worrying he was being to pushy, and let go of her. "But I'm happy to sleep on the floor if you're not comfortable."

"I don't remember what comfortable feels like," she told him. "But I'm not kicking you out of your own bed. Maybe I should get my own room."

"If that what's you want, but I want you to say here, with me."

"Okay," she said. "If you're sure."

"Very," he told her.

He went back to check on dinner, nothing had burned why they were away. He tasted the sauce to see if it needed any more seasoning.

"Can we eat red sou-sauce now?" Rey said eagerly.

He wasn't very hungry himself, but it would still take a while to cook the pasta. If Rey was hungry, well, he could eat early if he needed to.

"Soon," he told her as he started some water boiling.

"Can I ask you something," Rey said, sitting at the kitchen table watching him.

"Of course," he said. "I don't have any secrets from you, just maybe things I haven't told you."

"What's calligraphy?" she asked.

"What?" He couldn't imagine where that question had come from.

"When you showed me your thoughts. The only thing you think you know how to do other than fight and fly is calligraphy. What is it?"

"Oh!" he said, now that he understood. "It's… it's a kind of art centered around writing. On paper," he realized he should add.

The last thing he needed was her thinking he was some kind of poet. He wished he could write her sonnets, but he knew any attempt would be awful. Then again, he could find a poem that he could write out for her.

"I'll show you sometime," he promised. "But uh, it's not very practical."

"That must be nice," Rey said. "To be able to do something that has no use at all." He winced at her choice of words. "Maybe…maybe you'll teach our son?"

"Sure, of course," he said, surprised by her request.

They fell back into old patterns of comfortable silence they'd had on Garnik V. At least it was mostly comfortable. He kept searching for words to say to comfort her and make her feel better. But he didn't have any.

He made a small side salad while the pasta cooked, and soon he was setting the table. 

"That's a lot of forks," she told him.

He smiled, he was falling into old habits from his childhood. "Only two, nothing compared to one of my mother's state dinners."

"How many forks can one person use?" she asked her tone was light.

"Three easily, more if the Elder houses are throwing the party."

He realized then, he hadn't planned a desert, but it was too late now. He would have other chances, he reminded himself. For the moment, at least, Rey seemed content to stay.

"Do you remember the promise I made you?" he asked her.

She shook her head. 

He wasn't entirely surprised. "I told you on Garnik V that when we got off the planet, I would make you a meal, a real meal. What I didn't tell you…when I was a kid dinner time was… well it was either the best or the worst part of the day. The good ones were the ones where my mother was home, the best ones when my dad was as well."

"And the bad ones?" Rey asked.

"The nights my mother stayed at the Senate late. Those were a lot of nights. I usually didn't get to see her at all those nights. But every night, I set a place for her at the table, hoping that she'd make it home."

He almost looked over at his comm system, where the messages from his mother were waiting. But tonight was about him and Rey, and the meal he'd been waiting so long on, was finally ready.

He severed her some pasta, stopping her before she dug into it, so he could cover it in sauce. 

"Okay now," he told her.

Reyo grabbed her salad fork and used it to spear the pasta, but he didn't bother to correct her. When she took the first bite her eyes went wide and she smiled with joy at the taste. There was no grace to her eating, her table manners were terrible, and he didn't bother to ask if she'd ever had pasta, before, it was clear she hadn't.

But there was something beautiful about watching Rey eat. Her pure delight was infectious, and Ben didn't know if he'd ever felt so happy in his entire life.


	21. Starting Fresh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Ben start to figure out what their future might look like.

Rey woke up with a feeling of being wrapped in safety and warmth. Also, she really needed to pee. The problem was that warmth came from Ben, who had his arms around her. She really wished she could stay like this because she finally felt comfortable. It actually hadn't been an easy night. These days she tossed and turned a lot more than she used to, unable to get comfortable when she slept. That was a lot harder when you were sharing the bed with a colossal someone else.

Even so, right now, it was rather pleasant, except for the intense pressure on her bladder. She tried to wiggle her way loose so she could get up, but instinctively he held pulled her closer, and she could feel him grind himself against her.

Rey sighed; another time she might have appreciated that, but she couldn't help feeling that he was only hard because he was asleep. If he were awake and could see that she was purrgil sized these days, he wouldn't be quite so interested.

He was holding her too tightly for her to escape easily, especially since rolling free wasn't really an option, and she finally decided she had no choice but to wake him up.

"Ben," she hissed quietly at him. Then she wondered why she was being quiet since the point was to wake him up.

A little more determined squirming, and calling his name a few more times and he finally woke with a start.

"What is it? Is something wrong?" he asked quickly, transitioning from groggy to alert.

She didn't bother to answer but hurried to the 'fresher. Ben was smart enough to figure it out on his own.

When she was done, she walked back into the bedroom and found him sitting on the bed. He'd gone to sleep the night before, wearing only some dark, loose, sleep pants. His hair was disheveled, and long curls hung down over his face.

She couldn't help but just stop and look at him for a moment. He was so beautiful like this, with his bare feet and messy hair. If her body didn't still ache from running up a tower and fighting a battle the other day, she would have been tempted to climb all over him.

Instead, she wasn't really sure what to do. It was early morning, and she didn't think she'd be able to go back to sleep, but she wasn't ready to face the day either. 

He smiled a little unsurely at her, and she decided it felt too cold where she was standing, so she sat back on the bed with him.

He wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her hair.

"I forgot how good you smelled," he said.

She laughed at that. "Now you're making stuff up," she accused him. "It's not like I use those fancy soaps and stuff. And the last time you really had a chance to sniff me, was when we stranded on that planet. I couldn't have smelled all that great."

"You smell like Rey, that's good enough."

She couldn't help but lean back against him. It was nice to think that something about her hadn't changed. And she supposed she did understand. He didn't smell quite as much of leather anymore, but he had a deep musky smell all his own, and she had missed it.

She felt him shift so that she could feel his hardness press against the side of her leg. One of his hands started to move up from her belly up towards her breast.

"Ben," she hadn't meant her voice to have quite so much reproach in it.

He froze. "Can I at least kiss you?" he asked.

"Okay," she said, feeling like she should give him something.

It wasn't like some part of her didn't want to. She just felt too sore and awkward to really think about sex.

He laid her back and stretched out along her side, leaning over her so he could kiss her slowly. 

They'd never kissed like this before. Usually, kissing was just the precursor to clothes coming off before his mouth moved lower. But now he lazily tasted her lips, never delving too deep, just stealing small little kisses for himself.

She found herself slowly relaxing into it, letting her fingers run through his hair, and wondering if this could really be her life. If she really could wake up like this every morning without some terrible doom hanging overhead.

Because as it turned out, kissing by itself could be lovely. And if Ben started to pull her a little closer and kiss her a little deeper, his hands stayed on her face and shoulders, and he made no attempt for anything more.

She almost felt like she could drift back to sleep like this. She was so relaxed that she started a little when she felt the baby kick.

"What?" he asked concern in his dark eyes. "Is something wrong."

"Feet," she told him, somewhat amused by his confused look as he tried to shift his feet away, although they weren't even touching her. She smiled at him, "No, these feet."

She took his hand and placed it on her belly, in case the baby kicked again. He looked frozen as if he was afraid that he'd done something wrong until another kick came. Then his face lit up in a way she'd never seen. His grin reached all the way to his eyes. She'd never seen him with a look of such raw joy before.

He gave out a little laugh of delight that almost broke her heart with the innocence of it.

"You really want this, don't you?" she asked, amazed.

It had been the wrong thing to say because his smile dimmed.

"And you don't," he said sadly.

"No, I…I'm just not ready for it. I just never got around to thinking about having my own family before. Things were…stable on Jakku. I knew who I was, where I fit in, what I had to do every day to survive. And now I'm at the center of a galactic war."

He brushed her hair away from her face. "You don't need to worry about the war right now. From what I hear, they captured Hux, and most of the First Order fleet was destroyed. It may not be completely over, but you're not the only hope of a group of rebels anymore."

"Is that what I was?" she almost laughed a the idea. But then again, the way people treated her when they called her Jedi…

"Well, there only hope of defeating me for sure," he teased her.

"And are you? Defeated?" she teased.

He considered for a moment. "Kylo Ren certainly is. Me? I'm just…awake? That makes no sense."

Rey understood. She still felt like she was half trapped in Palpatine's nightmare. Maybe she would wake up too someday.

"It does," she assured him.

* * *

Ben was so proud and excited when he showed Rey his ship, that she almost felt bad when she laughed at it. Almost.

Sure, she had to admit that it was a beautiful B-Wing, and in other circumstances, she would have loved to take it out for a spin. No doubt, it flew like a dream. However, it was a fighter that had room for exactly one person, the pilot.

"Where am I supposed to sit?" she asked. "I don't think I'd fit in the pilot's seat even by myself right now, much less sitting on your lap.

That began a search for a ship that was more practical in nature. They still hadn't figured out exactly where they were going to go, only that they would leave Naboo. It was a beautiful planet, and Rey loved it, but it wore on her to be continuously recognized as the saviors of Theed. Of course, leaving the planet wouldn't guarantee them anonymity, but they had more of a chance.

They had, however, decided to stay on the planet until the baby was born. She was far enough along in the pregnancy that the doctors discouraged traveling through hyperspace if only because if she went into labor it might be hard to get her to a medical facility. Ben also found an article that claimed there was a link between pregnant women traveling in hyperspace and their children later developing bloodburn. There was no definitive proof, but they both loved flying too much to take even a chance that their child might develop a condition that would keep them from becoming a pilot one day.

All of this meant there was no pressure to find a ship right away or settle for one that didn't meet their needs.

It had lead to a few arguments, like who would pay for it. Rey wasn't sure she liked the idea of Ben paying; on the other hand, he did have several secret shipping companies they could register the ship under so that they could sneak off the planet quietly when the time came.

Mostly, however, it was an enjoyable time. Especially when Rey realized she could predict the issues that Ben would have with each and every ship they looked at it. It didn't take her long to realize that the underlying problem was always the same; the ship wasn't the Falcon. 

What she couldn't figure out was if he was aware of it. The last she knew, Chewie had the Falcon, and she didn't know if the Wookiee would consent to let them buy the ship from him or not. She also didn't know how Ben would react if she suggested it, since a few times a day, he silenced his comms when his mother tried to call him.

At first, Rey didn't say anything about it. She still remembered their very first meeting,

_You feel like he's the father you never had._

Knowing what she did now, she often wondered if that had been a kind of accusation. She had known Han for so brief a period and yet had quickly formed a connection. Had Kylo Ren been jealous? Had he wished for that same connection with his father?

She didn't think any good could come from asking the question. She could tell that Han's murder still hung about Ben's head, and she didn't know what, if anything, she could or should do about it. After all, even though Han's death had hurt her, it hadn't been about her, it was self-indulgent to think otherwise. It wasn't her forgiveness he needed; it was most likely his own, or perhaps his mother's. But it wasn't Rey's place to push him into that.

Except as the days went on, Rey missed Leia more and more. The General had been a friend and a mentor. More importantly, she was the only person Rey knew who had ever given birth, and although her doctors encouraged Rey to ask questions, it wasn't the same. There were things the doctors couldn't tell her, like what it was like to be a Force-sensitive mother, to a Force-sensitive son, because Rey was sure she could feel their son in the Force.

Also, just how big had Ben's head been when he was a baby?

Finally, one day Rey broke her silence on the subject. 

"You're going to have to talk to her eventually," she said one evening after he silenced another call. "Because I want her there when the baby's born."

He had ignored the first part, but his face became stoney at the second part. He didn't look directly at her.

"What makes you think she's even still here on Naboo?" he said bitterly.

That stunned Rey, it had never occurred to her that Leia would leave.

"Hux is off to Coruscant for his trial," he continued. "And the Resistance is hunting down the last of the First Order fleet. She has more important things to do than hang around Naboo."

Those last words were angry, not at Rey, but at his mother. 

Rey understood all too well. She understood what it was it was like to watch your parents fly off and leave you behind. He assumed that his mother didn't care that she had left. Rey had assumed the opposite, but was suddenly desperately afraid that Ben knew Leia better. That he was right. That they had been abandoned.

Rey began to cry, and Ben was swiftly apologizing, thinking it was his anger that had upset her and not the fear that he was right. She couldn't bear to not know, and so she grabbed his comm and activated the voice channel.

"Ben?" the General answered right away. "Thank goodness you've finally-"

"Leia?" Rey asked without thinking about how her voice must sound. "Where are you?"

"Rey?! What's wrong? I'm staying with my cousin in Theed. Are you okay? Is it the baby? I can be there right away."

Rey was so released that she found she could only sniffle as she tried to get her tears under control.

Ben snatched the comm from her. "Rey's fine, the baby's fine," he said sternly.

"Ben? I need to hear it from Rey," he stiffened, and Rey shared in his anger at his mother's suspicion.

"I-I'm fine," Rey said, aware that her voice probably didn't sound fine. "I just wanted to talk to you, and... I don't know why I'm crying."

It wasn't really a lie. Rey was tough. She had endured much worse than this, and tears were too precious to give to the Jakku sands. It wasn't like Rey to cry so easily, and she couldn't quite explain why she'd become so upset so quickly.

"It's my fault," Ben said sheepishly. "I told her you probably left the planet, I didn't know it would upset her."

"How could you think I would leave?" Leia asked.

Rey's first thought was to wonder how Leia could not understand why her son would think that. But then Rey remembered that Ben and his mother had come to find her together. They had stormed Palpatine's palace together and fought the Knights of Ren together. Rey recalled Leia, lightsaber in hand, filled with dark rage, ready to strike down anyone who tried to harm her son.

Rey hadn't asked about what had happened in her time in Palpatine's clutches. She tried hard not to think about the time she had lost. Now she was curious if Ben had failed to see his mother reaching out to him.

Ben didn't answer his mother, and it fell to Rey to fill in the silence. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you," she told Leia.

"It's okay," Leia said kindly. "I'm glad you called. I was probably going to have to come track you two down in person anyway, because Ben, you're in trouble."

"Whatever it is, I'm sure I can handle it," Ben said dismissively. He started to reach out to turn off the comm, but Rey stopped him.

"What is it? What's wrong?" she asked the older woman.

Leia took a deep breath, "You are going to have to handle it. And do so carefully and without losing your temper, because I can only do so much on my own." Leia paused. "Ben, they're going to arrest you."

He scoffed. "For what this time. Didn't they run out of charges to throw against me?"

"Charges that can be brought up in a normal criminal court, yes," Leia confirmed. "But only the Senate can hold a trial for sedition. Look, it would really be better if we talked about this in person."

That was as close to pleading as Rey had ever heard the General.

Rey looked up at Ben, and it was clear he could see the worry in her eyes. 

"All right, fine. You can come over."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bloodburn  
> https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Purrgil  
> https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/B-wing_starfighter


	22. Destruction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben finally has to talk to his mother again, as he learns about the charges of sedition against him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone, I'm going to try and get back into the normal rhythm of posting, at least every two weeks, if not every week. Also, I'll be posting on Fridays now, my work schedule changes so this just works better for me.

Ben wanted to kick himself. He'd never meant to upset Rey, he was honestly surprised to find that his mother hadn't left the planet to go off and continue fighting with her Resistance.

He wasn't really sure how he felt about her leaving either. During his own time with the Resistance, he had tried to maintain a distance from his mother, even while training her. Ben had always insisted he didn't need her help because he wasn't willing to depend on her. He didn't want to give her the chance to not be there when he needed her. That way, she couldn't disappoint him.

Rey didn't seem to understand that Leia Organa was not to be trusted. Sure she would never betray her ideals, but she couldn't be counted on to be there when it mattered.

He was going to be there for Rey and his baby no matter what. Which was the only reason he had agreed to see his mother. He could feel Rey start to panic at the mention that he might still be in legal jeopardy. It was Rey's concern that bothered him. After all, he didn't believe that the Senate had the power to hold him.

If he wasn't especially worried, he was angry. Angry that Rey was worried; that the little bit of peace and comfort they had started to build together was already threatening to be shattered. He was angry that she was in pain and upset.

So he wasn't exactly warm or polite when he opened the door for his mother. He felt even less generous towards her when he saw Rey smile as the two women hugged because he hadn't been the one to start to turn Rey's mood around, although at least Rey didn't seem to be on the verge of tears anymore.

But Rey's smile was short-lived.

"Is there really going to be another trial?" she asked desperately.

"Not if we're smart," Leia said. Then she turned to Ben. "Luckily, saving the city of Theed has made you something of local heroes. Even if the Queen wasn't on our side--which she is--your popularity means that she wouldn't dare hand you over to the Senate until they manage to get all the paperwork in order. She's willing to play up Naboo's sovereignty, and claim you as a citizen through House Naberrie."

"So, as long as we stay on Naboo, he's fine?" Rey asked.

"I'm afraid not," the former Senator shook her head. "Sooner or later, the Senate is bound to issue a formal arrest warrant. They only reason they haven't done so yet is because they are trying to agree on where to reconvene now that they are no longer hiding from the First Order. After Hosnia, no planet wanted to house the Senate, in case that made them a Frist Order target. The chances are it'll end up being Coruscant, but there's still some arguing among the Core Worlds about who will host the Senate now. So we have a little time."

"Hey," he put his hand on Rey's shoulder to comfort her. "It'll be okay. Can't you tell my mother is scheming something?"

His mother actually rolled her eyes at him.

"I wouldn't call it a scheme," his mother said. "Just a hopeful strategy. Look, I'm sorry that my leaking the video of you two saving Theed upset you, but it was necessary. The galaxy can't see him just as Kylo Ren. Because let's face it. You are guilty of sedition. You led an army that was trying to take over the government. No cunning legal argument is going to get you out of that. But…"

"But?" Rey asked, hopefully.

"If we can make you seem redeemed, and more importantly, if you help the government in its case against Hux, we might be able to negotiate some sort of immunity for you. Or at least a reduced sentence."

"Reduced sentence?" he scoffed. "I'm fairly sure the penalty for treason, or sedition, or whatever you're calling it, is death. Are they going to kill me only a little?"

Rey stiffened, and he realized he'd upset her again. He seemed to be doing a lot of that, and he hated himself for it, even while a small part of him was pleased that someone actually cared what happened to him.

To his surprise, even his mother looked a little defeated. "I don't know," she admitted. "I'm not sure what the way out is. You did terrible things, Ben, and if you weren't my son… I'd probably be calling for your trial as well. But we have to try. I've already got a legal team working on it, I need you to meet with them, _and_ cooperate with them. Do you understand?"

He nodded. For Rey and the baby, he would put up with her lawyers and her Senate nonsense.

The conversation shifted as his mother began asking Rey questions about the pregnancy. Ben had expected Rey to shy away from the questions. Instead, she seemed happy to talk to Leia about details of how she was feeling. Details that he always had to pry out of her.

He had known his mother liked Rey in some sort of generic sense. How could General Organa not like the idealistic young Jedi? But actually seeing them together, listening to how easily they talked, he realized that they really did have a close relationship. Leia was able to soothe many of Rey's concerns in a way he couldn't, and it was clear that in many ways, they were already family.

At some point, he got up to fix a snack for everyone. He tried to tell himself he was just anticipating Rey's inevitable hunger, but the truth was he felt the need to put a little distance—even if it was superficial—between himself and the two women. Because for the first time, he was genuinely worried about becoming a father.

Being in a domestic setting like this with his mother, brought back too many vivid childhood memories. How often had he done or said something that had upset his parents and led to fighting and unhappiness? Families were something he broke apart. He'd thought things would be different with Rey, but had he just been lying to himself?

Rey and his mother seemed so happy, and he was just a wedge that disrupted that. Would it be the same with their son? Would he destroy any chance of them being happy? His mind began to spin in anxious circles.

Rey suddenly looked up at him, then smiled apologetically at Leia. "Wow, this has been great, but I forgot how quickly I wear out these days."

"Oh, of course," Leia said. "If you're tired, you need rest. We'll talk again soon," she said, squeezing Rey's hand. 

His mother got up and faced him. She started to take a step towards him, then thought better of it. "Well, I'll call you tomorrow to set up a meeting with your legal team."

With that, the General left.

As the door closed behind her, Ben's worst fear was realized when Rey asked, "Are you okay?"

He had done it. The very thing he'd begun worrying about. He'd started driving a wedge between Rey and his mother when Rey clearly needed the older woman.

"Ben, what is it? What's wrong?" Rey asked, clearly picking up on the unhappy turn his thoughts had taken.

Living in close proximity, their bond had become even stronger. He should have realized there was no way she wouldn't pick up on his distress. But even being aware of his emotions impact on her, he wasn't able to reign in his feelings or control them.

"Please," Rey begged getting up to take his hand. "Please tell me what's wrong."

He didn't want to answer her, but he knew silence would only hurt her more. "I destroy everything," he finally said.

"Yeah, maybe," she agreed. "But some of those things: Snoke, the First Order, Star Destroyers, they needed to be destroyed."

He frowned at her, she didn't get it. "I meant families. I destroyed mine. And I'm going to destroy us."

Rey looked at him helplessly. "Maybe. Or maybe I will? I'm not any good at families either. I don't know how they work or how to do it right. At least you know how to do it wrong. I don't even know that."

The reminder that Rey was just as lost in all this was strangely comforting.

"We're a mess, aren't we?" he said and cautiously reached out to hug her. She leaned against him about put her arms around his torso. "You know, you're not bad at blowing stuff up yourself. Maybe our destructive powers will cancel each other out?"

She giggled a little. "You know that never works, right? The concussive force from two explosions doesn't cancel each other out, it just really messes up whatever you put between them."

He looked down at her, smiling. "You sound like you are speaking from experience."

She smiled back up at him. "Look, there wasn't a lot to do on Jakku, and there were a lot of unexploded ordinances. Which people don't pay well for because they tend to be too unstable to transport. So either you leave it there and wait for it to go off at a bad time. . . Or you have some fun."

"Rey Starfallen," he said, smiling. "Every time I think you can't get any sexier, I find out something like this about you."

She pulled away slightly. "If only I wasn't shaped like BB-unit," she said sadly.

"Rey I-" he kicked himself.

He told himself that he needed to be straight with her. Reminded himself that if he ever wanted to seduce Rey again, he needed to be upfront because subtlety was lost on her. But he hadn't done that. He'd been so grateful to have her staying with him, to be allowed to kiss and hold her, that he hadn't dared to go any further.

"Do you have any idea how much I want you?" he asked. "You are so beautiful like this. You're not a BB-unit. You're carrying my child, and it just makes me want to fuck you senseless."

He kicked himself thinking he'd gone too far. But then Rey smiled.

"Really?" she asked tentatively.

"Really," he assured her, and to prove it, he bent down to kiss her passionately.

She responded with equal fervor and even bit his lower lip playfully. He pulled her tighter against him, delighting in the feel of her body against his, but she froze and pulled back.

"Can we even. . . I mean, does this work?"

It was still disorienting to him that his normally shameless Rey had become so uncomfortable with her body since becoming pregnant. But it was clear she needed more encouragement.

"It does, and we can. As long as you make me a promise." She looked at him with expectant eyes. "If anything is uncomfortable, you let me know. I don't ever want to hurt you."

She nodded. "Yeah, I can do that, because…" she giggled. "Well, I'd liked to be fucked, but maybe not senseless, okay?"

He smiled. "Not senseless, got it," and with that, he led Rey to their bedroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys. So the end, it's not a cliffhanger leading to smut in the chapter. Sorry. I've been really struggling with this, and although there was supposed to be smut here, I just found I could write it, and I decided rather than delaying continuing this story forever, I'd post as-is. There may still be smut, later on, I'm not sure.


	23. A New View

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben has to travel to Coruscant

"Hey," Rey's voice startled Ben, bringing him out of his reverie. He felt her fingers slip into his. "What do you see?" she asked.

He squeezed her hand and bumped his arm against hers to feel her more solidly next to him.

He continued looking out the window of the high rise his mother had secured for them in Coruscant. 

"Speeders," he said after a moment's thought. "Hundreds of speeders all rushing off somewhere. The slow, orderly ones are driven by droids and belong to the rich. They're not in any hurry. Those ones are little traveling pods of luxury. But in and out of them, you can see the smaller ones darting dangerously in and out. Those will be the delivery people. People will real jobs and real lives, trying to get where they need to go quickly. Probably some spoiled rich kids as well."

"Is it true you can't see the ground in Galactic City?" she asked.

"I'm sure someone's seen it once," he joked. "But not from here. I'm only a few levels above the clouds, so you know, we're slumming it."

"I wish I could be there with you to see it," Rey said a little sadly.

His chest tightened. He squeezed her hand fiercely and looked down at her. "I shouldn't have left you all alone. I should have made my mother stay with you. I-"

"Shh," she told him. "It's okay. You need her to, you know, stay out of prison. And I'm not alone, Rose and Finn are here with me."

He wanted to point out that he was the one who should be there with her, but he didn't want to upset her. She seemed to be doing okay at the moment. Unlike the day he left Naboo.

He could still see her standing on the landing pad as he boarded the ship to Coruscant, tears streaming down her face as she sobbed and said goodby. 

His mother had done everything she could to delay his Senate hearing, to let him stay on Naboo until after the baby was born. But in the end, the Senate had made it clear that they wanted him to testify in person. Either he came to Coruscant, or he would be arrested on the spot, and there would be no more talk of a deal.

So he had gone and left Rey behind.

He squeezed her hand again. At least they had the Force to connect them like this. He didn't know what he would do if it wasn't for the bond.

"So are they going to have you start testifying soon?" she asked.

"Who knows," he puffed in frustration.

Despite the Senate insisting he come to Galactic City, and right away, he'd still hadn't testified before them. There had been an endless stream of depositions with security agents and other low-level officials, any of which could have been done remotely.

Ben was convinced he was here for one reason, and one reason alone, to make him suffer. Someone had figured out they could punish him by separating him from Rey, and they were doing it. Which didn't bode well for his deal.

Despite the efforts of the highly paid legal team his mother had put together, the government was not willing to agree to give him full immunity in exchange for his testimony against Hux. The best they were willing to do was assure him that any and all cooperation would be taken into account when his trial came.

Ben was convinced that no matter what he did, they would still sentence him to death. He was also sure he could escape any time he wanted, so that didn't worry him. The only reason he was putting up with any of this was for Rey. 

Because although he had never directly asked her if she'd be willing to run off with him to the Unknown Regions and live there lives away from the rest of the Galaxy, he was pretty she didn't want that. The truth was he didn't either, but he suspected, in the end, they'd have no other choice. However, it wasn't going to be because he didn't try.

As if reading his thoughts, she smiled, looked up at him, and said, "I'm proud of you."

"For what?"

"For not losing your temper, or secretly strangling anyone."

"Maybe I've done it so secretly you haven't heard about it," he joked with her.

She let go of his hand to wrap her arms around his chest and bury her face against him.

"What can I say, I'm counting on the paparazzi to keep you honest," she told him.

He snorted.

Considering everything the galaxy had to worry about with the fall of the First Order and rebuilding the Senate, a large portion of the galaxy seemed to focus on gossiping about him. Of course, a lot of that was his mother's doing. She might have gotten him a squadron of lawyers, but she'd hired an entire army of publicist and image consultants to work on his redemption.

It wasn't just him. Rey had fallen prey to it all as well. Or rather, she'd asked if she could help at one point, and next thing they both knew she was in front of the cameras. Rey was, as it turned out, something of a natural. Once they got the publicists to stop trying to make her glamorous, she had a charm that people fell in love with.

She had a simple, easy way of talking about the Force. She didn't try to maintain the illusion of great wisdom and distance that the Jedi had cultivated but spoke in simple terms about how everyone and everything, good and bad, were united by the Force.

She was sweet, kind, and down to earth. All of which made people all the more curious how she had ended up with Kylo Ren. After the kiss on Naboo, they couldn't have hidden their relationship if they tried. Not that his publicists wanted to hide it. Ben had been told more than once that Rey was the most lovable thing about him.

He just hated that it was so hard on her. She did it, and she did it for him but hated every moment. All she wanted was to disappear back into the crowd.

So she was allowed to tease him about his own celebrity status, unlike his mother's PR people. Ben could never decide if they were making fun of him or not. His mind wandered to the awful outfit waiting for him in the closet for when the Senate did finally summon him.

"What is it?" she asked, once again sensing the direction of his thoughts.

He would have liked to say, 'Nothing,' but as their bond had deepened, they'd realized that didn't work for them. The other person would always sense whatever was bothering them. So for the sake of each other, they'd learned to speak about these minor annoyances instead of trying to ignore them.

"It's just this terrible outfit they've chosen for me…"

"Oh? I want to see," Rey said excitedly. 

He snorted. "You just want to watch me undress," he teased her.

Honestly, he was glad to see her happy about something. If this was all it took to distract her from everything else, well, he could play dress up for her.

She laughed and sat down to watch him. 

He didn't try a strip tease, they'd found the bond wasn't very conducive to that. Both of them still found it distracting when things appeared or disappeared when the other person picked them up or put them down, respectively. Also, there was never any predicting how long the Force would keep them connected. So he tried to change quickly and efficiently before the connection ended.

He found himself struggling as he tried to fix his belt in place. It had been a long time since he'd dressed like this, and it was hard to get the sash to stay in place as he tried to buckle the belt over it. Seeing him fiddle with it, Rey got up to help him adjust it.

"I don't see what's wrong with this," she said. "You look good."

He should have realized she'd like it. It was a deep Alderaan green, and Rey, he had learned, loved green.

She took in the full view and then said, "It's because you look like a Jedi, isn't it?"

"There are no green Jedi," he said, without thinking.

"Really?" she teased him. "I never read that rule. Not even Twi'leks?"

"I meant…" he huffed, afraid he would say something that might hurt or offend her.

She frowned at him. "This really bothers you, tell me," she implored him.

He sighed. "It's not just the color, it's the fabric. Do you know how much this cost? Yes, the tunic, the tabard, all of it is cut like something a Jedi would wear but. . . No Jedi would ever wear something this ostentatious."

These were clothes for a prince, and there was no such thing as a Jedi prince. Oh, he understood what the point of the outfit was. It was to emphasize everything 'good' about him. He was Skywalker's nephew, he was a Prince of Alderaan, and so on. 

Rey shook her head. "That's not it. Why does this really bother you?"

He looked across the room at a mirror. It was getting later in the day and he hadn't turned on the lights yet. From across the room in the dim light, the green could have been a dark grey. He really did look like a Jedi.

Rey kept fidgeting with his clothing. Adjusting how the tabard hung below the belt, until it was even on both sides, waiting for him.

"I wanted it, all right?" he said defensively. "I hated that my parents sent me away. I hated that I didn't have a choice, but even so. . . I wanted it. He said that I was the future of the Jedi order and then…"

"Then he gave up on you," Rey finished, understanding he was talking about Luke Skywalker. 

"Yeah," was all Ben could say. 

Even now, it hurt. No matter how hard Ben tried to pretend it didn't matter, the simple fact remained, he had given everything he had to be the Jedi his family had wanted, and it hadn't been enough. 

"So be a Jedi," she said, smoothing down the front of his outfit.

"You can't just-" he stopped himself as she looked up, daring him to finish that sentence.

"Dress like a Jedi?" she finished for him.

They both knew he had been going to say, 'Call yourself a Jedi.'

"If you don't want to tell her the real reason you don't like it," Rey continued, "Then just tell her if she wants you to dress like a Jedi, you want to actually dress like a Jedi. She'll let you do it."

"I didn't say I wanted to dress like a Jedi," he tried to correct her.

"No," she agreed. "But you still want it, don't you? You're like me. Luke Skywalker said, you can't be a Jedi, so you just want it even more."

His first instinct was to argue, but her gentle mood was infectious. "Well, pissing off all those Jedi ghosts would be satisfying."

She scrunched up her nose at him. "There's the Ben Solo I know and love," she teased. 

He kissed her. It wasn't the first time she'd said she loved him, but it still threatened to knock him off his feet every time. And in some ways, it was even better when it slipped out casually like this. She gripped the front of his tunic tightly as the kiss quickly became passionate. He pulled her more tightly against him and…

…just like that, she was gone. 

"I was only kidding about pissing you guys off," he said to the empty air. 

Not that he really thought Jedi ghosts were floating about keeping an eye on him. But if there were and, they could bring Rey back. . .

There was only silence. It was probably for the best. Ben didn't really want to put on a show for his dead relatives. He saw himself in the mirror one more time and decided maybe Rey was right. If the PR wanted him to dress like a Jedi, well, at least he could do it right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who has been excited to see this story back. I think I've found my second wind for it. I started this story before TROS and I always figured TROS would change my planned ending to some extent because I'd want to incorporate some of how they resolved the fate of the galaxy and the Jedi. Except none of that got resolved.
> 
> TROS, however, did make me realize what I wanted from a Star Wars ending, specifically a Ben Solo redemption, and I ended up working a lot of those ideas into this story. So I'm not excited to finally get to that part, and I hope you like it as well.


	24. The Bond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben finally begins to testify at Hux's trial.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully, this chapter doesn't have too many errors. I was trying really hard to get it done for today, so I haven't had as much of a chance to re-read things.

"And where did the materials come from?" Senator Okampa asked.

"I really have no idea, Senator," Ben said, trying hard to keep the irritation out of his voice.

He'd finally been called on to testify at Hux's trial, and they seemed to want to ask him about nothing, except where the supplies for Starkiller Base had come from.

He'd already named off every system he was aware of that had supplied the First Order, but they still kept asking.

"You were Supreme Leader," the Senator reminded him. "And you expect us to believe you don't know how the First Order undertook such a massive project?"

Before he could answer, his lawyer leaned forward. "Senator, it's well established that my client was not Supreme Leader during the construction or operation of Starkiller Base."

Ben knew he should be grateful for her. Ralla Arno had come out of retirement as a favor to his mother to represent him in these proceedings. The elderly Togruta had represented many people before the Senate, which was why she was the member of his legal team sitting out here with him.

"Even so," Okampa shot back. "Starkiller was a massive undertaking. Are we really to believe he knew nothing about it."

"Logistics was never my job," Ben retorted, before remembering this was the sort of question he was supposed to let the lawyers answer. 

The trouble was his patience had worn thin. Rey had been due a week ago, and every unnecessary question meant he had even less time to get back to her.

"And what precisely was your job? What is the job description of a Knight of Ren?"

"Terror and hopelessness," Ben replied without a second thought. "My job, as you put it, was to make sure people were too afraid to stand up to the First Order."

"What my client means is-"

"And you were quite good at your job, I take it?" the Senator continued.

"Clearly not good enough," Ben remarked. 

"Because you failed to subjugate-"

The Senator was silenced by a cry of pain. Everything else seemed to get quieter as the Force connected him and Rey.

He was on his feet in a second, completely forgetting that he was in a repulsorpod in the center of the Senate, testifying in a trial before the entire galaxy. All that mattered was Rey, who was in front of him, a hand resting on her stomach and a look of confused pain on her face.

"What is it? Are you okay? Is the baby okay? What's happening?" the questions poured out of him in a torrent.

"I'm okay," she said. She gripped Ben's shoulder, "Hey, I'm fine."

"Are you alone? You need to call someone. You need to get to a doctor,"

"It's okay," she told him. "Rose is getting the speeder. And there doesn't seem to be much point in calling anyone."

She gestured to something over his shoulder. He looked, before realizing he couldn't see whatever she was pointing at. But he did see his lawyer who seemed to be having a fit.

He grabbed Rey's hand, so he wouldn't lose track of her but then shifted his focus to better hear what was being said around him.

"-display of contempt for these proceedings." It was Senator Okampa yelling at him.

"It's not my client," his lawyer was saying. "Who disrupted these proceedings. Now, if the young Jedi would be so good as to leave…" she looked pointedly at Rey.

Rey's focus was on the spot behind Ben she had pointed to a minute ago. She was very focused then she looked back at him. "Young Jedi? Does she mean me?"

Ben began to understand what was happening. The bond was instantaneous, uncaring about the distance between Coruscant and Naboo. There was, however, a small delay in the trial being broadcast from the Senate, and reaching the holoprojector, Rey must have been watching it on.

"Look I…" Rey turned, frowned, then turned again, clearly trying to orient herself towards the woman she was speaking to, but couldn't directly see. "I don't have control over this." Something caught Rey's attention. "No, he's not here, he's there," she explained to someone unseen. "Yes, please let's go." She sounded desperate.

Ben's heart dropped. It must have been Rose. And Rey certainly needed to get to the hospital, but he didn't want to let go of her. 

"You will stop this at once," Senator Okampa demanded. "I will not have you make a mockery of these proceedings."

That decided him. If the Senate needed to yell at him, that was fine. But Rey didn't deserve or need to be yelled at while she was giving birth. Also, he didn't need to ask to know that the last thing she wanted was the whole galaxy watching as she did so.

He pressed the button on the repulsorpod that would cause it to return to one of the entrances to the Senate chamber.

"You are in contempt of the Senate!" he heard Okampa yell at him even as his attorney was trying to convince him this was a bad idea.

"Take it up with the Force," Ben couldn't help but yell back.

"Ben, you'll get in trouble," Rey cautioned him, but she was leaning more heavily on his arm as he slowly followed her.

"I'm already in trouble," he told her softly. "And this- _you_ are more important."

The door that led outside the Senate chamber opened, there in the hallway was his mother looking very concerned. 

"Rey, how are you?" she asked.

"She can't hear or see you," Ben explained. "Only me."

"Well, that's not at all strange," his mother remarked.

"Who is it?" Rey asked him at the same moment.

"My mother," he explained.

"Oh, hi," Rey said.

"This way," his mother directed them into a nearby office.

As they entered the office, Rey gripped his arm harder and stopped gasping in pain.

"Are you okay?" Ben asked, somewhat panicked. Was he supposed to be doing something? He couldn't remember.

"It's a contraction, dear," his mother said. "There's going to be a lot of those, she's fine. Ask her how far apart they are."

"I'm fine," Rey said. "What's your mother saying?"

"How did you know-?"

"Well, I hope you were listening to her. Otherwise, I'm a bit annoyed that you're not paying attention to me. Wait, we're not in the Senate, still are we?"

"No, it's just us…and my mother, in an office. She wants to know how far apart your contractions are."

"Oh, not too close, I think," Rey said. She sat down on a couch and gestured for him to sit next to her. "We haven't really started timing them. Finn? I forgot I'm supposed to time the contractions."

"Finn's there?" Ben asked, annoyed.

"Of course he is," Rey said, lighting hitting Ben on the arm as he sat next to her. "And remember, he can hear you, so be nice."

"Is he being nice?"

"Very," Rey said.

"Liar," he accused her. 

For just a second, she smiled at him. Then suddenly, she dug her fingers into his arm. "Don't leave," she begged him.

"I won't," he promised, putting his arm around her and holding her tightly. "I'm not going anywhere, I'm going to be with you the whole way, no matter what, I promise."

He only wished he believed the words. That there wasn't an icicle of fear that at any moment, the bond would cruelly disconnect them.

"It's going to be fine," his mother assured him. "You're going to be there for all of it."

Things continued a little strangely after that. Except for the battle on Theed, the bond had never connected them in front of other people. Poor Rey found herself explaining more than once, to the hospital staff that he couldn't see or hear them, only Rey.

So he wasn't being rude when he didn't get out of someone's way, he just wasn't aware of them. But he wasn't like a hologram either. And more than once, someone bumped into him, thinking they could pass through him as if he was just projection. It was frustrating listening to her talk to other people he couldn't hear, especially when she was clearly listening to one of the doctors or nurses, and he couldn't listen to what they were saying.

Sometimes she would repeat what they said to him. Sometimes she didn't. He wanted to know all of it, but he could also see it was wearing her out. So after a while, he stopped asking her to repeat everything, and he had to trust that she was telling him whatever was most important.

In the meantime, his mother was in and out of the office they had taken over. He had never been so grateful for her because there were several attempts to dislodge them from the office or to try and make him come back and finish his testimony. 

She handled all of it so that he could sit and be with Rey.

Including when the lights were turned off on them by an automatic timer.

Ben laughed.

"What?" Rey asked. "Did your mom tell a joke? She tells good jokes."

"No," he told her. "The lights went out. I'm in the office of someone who has set their lights to turn off at night, even if someone is using it, and you are a galaxy away giving birth, and it's all just…"

She started to smile, but it turned into a grimace as another contraction hit her.

"I'm sorry," he told her.

"No," she said. "I like it when you laugh. You look so goofy. People wouldn't think you were a bloodthirsty warlord if you only laughed more."

Someone in the room with her must have said something in response to that because Rey stuck out her tongue at them.

He laughed again and started to relax. The lights going out had been a kind of blessing. He suddenly realized how late it was, and he and Rey were still connected. He started to believe that the bond wasn't suddenly going to break at the worst possible moment. After all, it was just he and Rey that were connected. He'd been the first to be aware of their son in the Force back when Rey didn't even know she was pregnant.

Their son wasn't just a blip now, he was strong and distinct as he tried to push his way into the world, and he would forever connect the two of them in new ways.

Finally, the lights came back on, and his mother returned.

"Sorry that took so long," she said. "Senator Rantha is a bit of a cheapskate, and also not really fond of the idea of someone having a baby in his office. But I threatened to have 3PO explain it to him, and he gave in."

"He still hasn't lost his reputation of the terror of Senate protocol meetings?" Ben asked. 

Rey gave him a strange look, having heard only one side of the conversation, and he sighed. This was better than nothing, but he would have given anything to have been there in person.

Then an idea occurred to him. Just as he was connected to his son, he'd always had a connection to his own mother, like it or not. It wasn't the same as his bond with Rey, but it was something tangible to those who could feel the Force.

He reached out his hand to his mother.

Surprised, she took it, and he began to concentrate, finding the bonds that connected all of them, pulling them together.

"Leia!" Rey gasped in surprise.

"Oh, sweetie, finally." Leia's said in delight as she reached out to stroke Rey's face.

Without further ado, the two women were talking, laughing, and crying, while Ben sat between them, holding onto his mother, using much of his strength to bridge the gap between her and Rey.

"Ben," his mother was pulling on his hand, trying to get his attention. "You need to let go."

He looked at her in confusion. He hadn't heard anything that had been said recently, using all his concentration to bring his mother into the bond.

"You're wearing yourself out, and you need to be a part of this, not me," she told him.

His mother pulled her hand out of his breaking the connection.

He took a deep breath, only realizing how much effort he had taken now that he was done.

Then he was aware of Rey crying out again. And he completely forgot all about his mother and the Force. There was just Rey, her face was now sweaty, and she was no longer shrugging off the contractions.

After all the hours he'd lost track of, things started to happen very quickly. Her contractions were right on top of each other. Her focus was clearly on the medical staff who he couldn't hear or see, and he felt useless and extra, except that she wouldn't let go of his hand. As if he were an anchor keeping her grounded.

He tried to say encouraging things, although he couldn't tell if she was listening. All he could do is sit there, helplessly holding her hand.

Then she collapsed backward.

"What happened, are you okay?" He couldn't help but ask.

"I think there's a baby, I can hear one," she said weakly.

Then her eyes were focused elsewhere, and she had a look of wonder. "Can I?" she asked someone else, weakly.

For the first time in hours, she let go of his hand, and the biggest smile he'd ever seen erupted on her face, even as she began to cry. Their son seemed to materialize in her arms as she held him for the first time.

"Can you see him?" she asked.

"Yes," he said in wonder, as he looked at the tiny human who had just popped into existence.

Everything else seemed to vanish; there was just Rey and the baby. His son, whose beautiful little face was scrunched up in anger as he screamed at against the indignity of being born.

Hesitantly Ben reached out to brush the back of one knuckle along his son's cheek.

"Do you want to hold him?" Rey asked.

Ben did, but it also terrified him. He shook his head. "What if the bond breaks and I disappear. What if I crush him?"

"You won't crush him," Rey said. Then she sighed. "But maybe you're right. At least till we're together in person."

Rey responded to congratulations from the others in the room with her, and he relayed the message from his mother about how the baby was perfect.

"We haven't picked one yet," Rey was telling someone. 

No, they had not managed to agree on a name.

"Just as long as we are all agreed on what his name shouldn't be," his mother said firmly.

Both women looked at him. He had wanted to name their son Han. He didn't want to ever have the opportunity to lie or hide the truth from his son about who he was or what he had done.

Both Rey and his mother were adamant that this was a terrible idea and that the name would haunt the boy all his life.

Looking at the tiny life in front of him, he was now in agreement. Or at least he didn't want to give his son any share of sorrow. 

"Well, I'll give you two a minute to get to know him, and maybe get us something to eat," his mother said as she left the office. 

"Oh please, yes," Rey pleaded with someone on her end. "Can I have food now?"

Her smile told him that someone had agreed to get her food. 

"If you're open to suggestions," a man's voice said. "I have one to offer."

Ben looked over in surprise at the new voice, and his jaw dropped.

"Who is that?" Rey whispered to him. "And why is he glowing blue?"

"We haven't properly met," the Jedi said, adjusting how his robes draped over his arms, despite the fact he was a ghost, and so there was no real fabric to adjust. "I'm Anakin."

"Wait? That Anakin? But aren't you dead, and shouldn't you be old, and half machine or something?" Rey asked. 

Ben found he couldn't think of anything to say, despite having wished for this moment for years. The ghost looked much as he had in that strange dream Ben had had in prison, and he was now wondering if that had been a dream at all.

"One of the advantages of being dead is you don't have to be old," the elder Skywalker said. "Look, I don't have a lot of time, I can't keep this going for too much longer." He looked at Ben, who's still couldn't figure out what to say. "But I wanted to make sure you had this moment that I never got. Anyway," Anakin shrugged, "If you're taking suggestions for names, how about Rex? It's a good name. A name for someone who makes their own destiny."

"Rex Solo," Rey said, testing it out. "You could be a lot of things with a name like that."

"Anything he wants," Anakin agreed before vanishing.

"Wait, I…" but it was too late, just as Ben had started to remember things he'd wanted to ask his grandfather, the ghost was gone.

"Hmm," Rey said, nonplused by the ghost's arrival or departure. "Rex Solo. It's kind of a big sounding name, but you'll probably grow into it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Togruta  
> https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Repulsorpod  
> https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Rex

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I know. I didn't resolve the cliff hanger. But important stuff has been happening, and Hux doesn't like it when everyone forgets about him.


End file.
